The Means of Book Trading That Dares Not Speak Its Name: eBay

Finally, after endless chains of phone calls, I found four brave souls who were willing to talk to me – two for attribution, and two on the terms that they remain anonymous. They consisted of both collectors and dealers, sometimes even incorporated within the same person. I talked with each of the four individually, and to my knowledge none of them know each other. But I have formatted this article as if it were a roundtable organized around themes even though there was no group conversation.

Having said all this, it becomes time for me to introduce the participants in this eBay dialogue. The two who spoke for attribution are John T. Zubal, a Cleveland, Ohio bookdealer (www.zubal.com) , and William P. Barlow Jr., a partner in the Oakland, CA, accounting firm of Barlow & Hughan. Barlow is an accountant by day but an Americana and ephemera collector by night and a co-teacher (with Terry Belanger) at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School (www.virginia.edu/oldbooks/). Logically enough, I will refer to these individuals by their real last names. And then there are our anonymous participants, one a British-born special collections librarian at an urban library’s local history collection and part-time independent bookseller whom I’ll call Librarian X and one a store manager for a rare books dealer specializing in 20th century firsts in the areas of modernism in design, photography and art based in one of New York’s most affluent resort communities whom I’ll refer to as Dealer Y.

Let us begin with one defacto disclaimer: these four individuals by no means make up a representative or random sample: they are just the people I could get to talk on this surprisingly controversial and closeted topic. Not all agreed on every issue, and there will be contradictory statements reflected in this article. Some took the same basis of facts and reached remarkably differing conclusions. And again, at no time did they speak together; their quotes are just arranged under subject headings for organization’s sake.

“Round Table”

LENGTH OF TIME USING EBAY

Librarian X: “I have been using eBay for 3 ½ -4 years. I plan to continue using eBay for the foreseeable future.”

Zubal: “I started to sell on it 5 years ago. Mostly I post popular culture stuff, things with lots of graphics, Hardy Boys or Mark Twain in jacket. Nothing too serious: I can sell that through other venues. I always include pictures with my materials for sale. Currently on eBay I have for sale 4 years of the Illustrated London News, 1887-1888, essentially a chronicle of civilization with illustrations.”

Barlow: “I’ve been on eBay for something like 6 or 7 years.”

Dealer Y: “I’ve been using eBay for about 5 years. I started using it for what was then my own bookselling business. Then I was hired by my present employer, a high end rare books dealer, to manage one of his bookshops and I started using eBay for my employer as well as for my own collecting interests.”

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The Means of Book Trading That Dares Not Speak Its Name: eBay

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The Means of Book Trading That Dares Not Speak Its Name: eBay

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