J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion

Bought: $3.94 Sold: $59.99 Fees: $5.05 Profit: $51.00

I normally avoid books, as it just isn't what I want to spend my time on. A lot of people flip books, and do quite well for themselves. That being said, it normally involves scanning the bar codes of hundreds of books and looking up their value online - not my idea of a fun time. That being said, I still look through the used books at VV for two reasons - to look for books that I might want for myself, as Robin and I have quite the collection in our library, and to see if anything obvious jumps out at me. With Chris being almost a Doctor in English, and my own interest in literature, I have a basic sense of what may be valuable. Ultimately I am often looking for first editions or something odd or unusual. When I saw this old looking version of J.R.R. Tolkien's lesser known novel I figured I'd check the edition. It turned out it was the first UK edition - and since Tolkien is British, this is the actual first edition. It was a quick buy, and thankfully eBay is a good place to sell first editions. One advantage of selling used or rare books on eBay over Amazon is that it allows you to post more pictures and provide a more thorough description of the book and collectors want to know that information. At the end of the day, I learned a bit more about this novel, and I made a nice profit.