House call from hell

The "normal" ones never have any amusing stories to go along with them.

A good friend has been buying from this individual for a very long
time; the seller has been pushing him to either buy or find a buyer for
a large "collection" -- I use the term losely -- of books. My friend
doesn't deal in books at all, so he had no interest. More as a favor
to him than out of need for book inventory I went on the call with him
last week. It was only a few miles away and I had errunds nearby if
the deal didn't go through. We are greeted at the door mid-morning by
the homeowner with a cocktail in hand. Never a good sign. The
homeowner tells my friend to go show me the books. To the third floor
we go, gets better by the minute doesn't it? I look over the books,
finding that roughly two-thirds are encyclopedias, thirty year old
college texts, and paperbacks from the past decade or so. The
remaining third is at least mostly interesting, but nothing great.
Still it's all on the third floor, and it's all or nothing.

Back downstairs I make my fair, under the circumstances, offer of a
couple hundred bucks. 1000 books, with around 300 of them being at
best $0.50 each at a yard sale, another 2-300 being trash, on the third
floor, we aren't talking big bucks. Homeowner declines my offer, but
wants to counter, and needs time to think about it. Off we go to
another part of the house where my friend is currently searching. When
we return, the counter offer is pulled out of the homeowner. Minimum
offer to be considered $2,000. And the explaination of the price,
people want newer books more than they want older books so they are
worth at least 2k. Which turns to well I really don't want to get rid
of them that's why they are so expensive.

Good lord, if you really don't want to get red of them, why on earth
have you been pestering my friend to buy them for a year?

The best though, was as we were leaving. Homeowner seemingly has
decided in drunken state that the mass amount of stuff to deal with is
more to deal with than desired. "Would you consider buying the whole
place with all the ***, I only want around seven-hundred-fifty
thousand." Well, golly, I just happen to have 750k in my back pocket.
;)

Jessica

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