The latest update shows that bidding for The Fancy Book has exceeded $5,000. I can hardly believe it. Yes, perhaps (as one commenter said) the book isn’t “worth it”—but who cares? This is a lot of dough for Doctors Without Borders, and that means a lot of people helped—I hope.
Thanks again to Kelly Houle for her superb artwork that surely boosted the value. The auction still has six days to go.
Whoo hoo! Going for the 10K mark! 🙂
Is there any way to get Sam Harris to autograph the book too?
I wanted to, so that all three living “Horsemen” would have signed, but I haven’t seen Sam in person for about two years. I could have mailed it to him and asked him to sign it and send it back, but that would have taken some time and Kelly and I wanted to get the auction going. I may start another book with different signatures, say scientists, as I’m going to Harvard next week.
Any chance you’ve got a pre-print of The Albatross you could use? Now that might get some attention from book collectors!
b&
Would it be too inconvenient or contrived to ask Sam to put his John Henry and a comment on a slip of paper that could be a page insert? Surely, it wouldn’t take long for such a slip to be express-mailed to you, and there would not be the risk of losing/damaging the Precious (a la Diana M.)in transit. I like the idea of a second book with signatures, and I especially love Ben’s idea.
For the nitwits that complain that the book isn’t “worth” such a price… it clearly is. A great book for a worthy cause. They should write their *own* book and see if they can garner that much support.
Interesting I thought “worth” was entirely subjective: anything is worth precisely what someone is willing to pay for it.
I have seen people at my daughters’ school fundraisers bid more for less significant items: once a woman paid $5,000 for the primo parking space. There’s the item, then there’s the excitement of the auction, and of course then there’s the object of the benefit. Whatever one thinks of the value of an autographed book, Doctors without Borders is deserving of every penny they get.
So there’s that.
SA – I was going to call them ‘dolts’ but nitwits works for me! Worth = what someone is willing to pay, and if I had the wherewithal, I would run it to $100,000, because it would be worth that to me.
And – forgot to check box 🙁
Great news. I was happy to see Kelly had the Orchid and Moth print up for sale, so I bought one of those. So at least I’ll have a reference to the illuminated WEIT.
And remember that the few minutes or so is where this book can really take off if a bidding war begins. There seems to be enough bidders for this to happen. Let’s hope it does!
Sorry for all the italics…damn brackets!
“last few minutes or so”…man, I need more coffee or something.
I automatically added the “last.” 🙂
That bidding rush in the last few minutes is where something is going for a bargain price and people are waiting till the last minute to bid on it in the hope of getting it below cost. I’m not sure the same mechanism applies in a charity auction.
(Be interesting to see if I’m wrong…)
That’s a good point…I buy a lot of collectibles and have seen bidding wars on very high priced items like this one. You may be right since this is a charity auction though. I’ll be watching.
Too bad that some don’t understand that this is mainly about donating to Doctors Without Borders, and has very little to do with the book.
Oh, congratulations, Jerry!
There is a song by Don McLean (I think) about the auction of a horse that includes the repeated line “the more you pay, the more it’s worth”. I’ve used that line a lot, actually.