{"id":275,"date":"2005-12-04T15:39:11","date_gmt":"2005-12-04T20:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/?p=275"},"modified":"2005-12-06T11:54:47","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T16:54:47","slug":"the-protocols-of-selling-the-protocols-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/04\/the-protocols-of-selling-the-protocols-book\/","title":{"rendered":"The Protocols of Selling the Protocols Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been watching the feeding frenzy that found expression in eBay auctions wherein sellers are offering up copies of the Max Maven book, “The Protocols of the Elders of Magic,”<\/em> at prices ranging from the truly sublime, to the truly — and I mean truly<\/em> — fantastic.<\/p>\n

After tabulating the results, I find that the “Grand Prize” (such as it is) goes to Internet magic shop owner and “Cheating at Hold’em”<\/em> author, David Malek, who handily sold five copies at twice the original price:<\/p>\n

November 30, 2005 $100<\/a>
\nDecember 1, 2005 $100<\/a>
\nDecember 1, 2005 $100<\/a>
\nDecember 1, 2005 $100<\/a>
\nDecember 2, 2005 $100<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, there are those who might suggest Malek is “just doing good business” — buy low, sell high, the American Way. And what do I know? Maybe the buyers are perfectly happy with the $100 they each spent on the book. I hear people are initially and literally ecstatic<\/em> with some of the purchases they make in Pahrump, NV<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum we find eBay ID “a.messenger” who sold a copy<\/a> at a “Buy It Now” price of just $60. (Apparently this seller didn’t attend the same business school as did Malek.)<\/p>\n

The Most Amusing<\/em> award goes to Brian Glicker and his auction with a “Buy It Now” price of $150<\/a>. He apparently wasn’t convinced by my answer<\/a> to his wondering regarding what’d he’d bought<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Q: Don’t bragging rights count for anything any more?<\/em>
\nA: Yes. Apparently they go for about $150 these days.<\/em><\/p>\n

Clearly, the Most Ambitious<\/em> award goes to “New York Comedy Stage Hypnotist” Sebastion Black for attempting a drive-by “Buy It Now”<\/a> of $355. A subsequent auction<\/a> yielded $136.26 from one of my favorite members of the mystery entertainment community.<\/p>\n

While not an auction, I want to mention fellow guitar picker Jon Elion<\/a>, who sold his copy<\/a> of “The Protocols of the Elders of Magic”<\/em> for precisely what he paid: $50<\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, I’m still getting the occasional email accusing me of all sorts of un-American Way things because of publicly noting my opinion of some people purchasing multiple copies of the book to resell. If these people won’t read the plain language I’ve already used to describe what I meant, I’m not going to spend additional valuable time restating it using only one- and two-syllable words. “Do what thou wilt”<\/em> is the hole of the law, that’s for sure.<\/p>\n

My copy is on my bookshelf. It’s another of my talisman books, a concept I’ll explain some day soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been watching the feeding frenzy that found expression in eBay auctions wherein sellers are offering up copies of the Max Maven book, “The Protocols of the Elders of Magic,” at prices ranging from the truly sublime, to the truly — and I mean truly — fantastic. After tabulating the results, I find that the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}