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Message:: [QUOTE="afantiques, post: 12594, member: 25"]If you get it for 2 bucks, a dollar profit would be a modest profit, but unreasonable, $150 would be an enormous percentage profit but reasonable. If you got it for $100, that same $150 would be a modest profit. If you got it for $100 but insist on $500, that would not be a modest profit unless a dozen buyers were beating your door down to buy it. Your large profit may never materialise and you have $100 tied up that you might have used to buy and sell a dozen times before you finally sell your book for what you can get. I tend to buy antiquarian books at auction (local venues, not ebay) if I think the price reasonable and they sometimes are quite cheap because few auction goers are all that interested in musty old tomes written in funny printing about things that happened long ago, or are now considered nonsense. If the saleroom is not all that fly on books, the reserves may be very low, and often that is the only real opposition bidding. Then I read my purchases if they are interesting, and take that book I paid £30 for and sell it in Hay-on-Wye ( book town near my 'country retreat') for £50 to a dealer who is prepared to hold the thing for ages to double his money, or who sells on some specialised book site or who has specialised customers on tap. It's a modest profit.[/QUOTE]