Come on, Silver, the boy has taken enough of a beating in this thread. He just meant that 100+ bucks seems expensive.

But how much have some of us dished out for Casino Game Protection?

Or better yet: AMcD, how much have you dished out for your library? Or did you steal all your books?

Silver, I don't understand your attack here. I'm just expressing an opinion. If today's price is more or less equal to 110 bucks, I'm sorry for that, but my brain reacts, it tells me "oooch! It's pretty expensive for a book about card magic". Even divided by two it's not that cheap. Do we need to be an expert to express such basic opinions? What about you? You think that 100+ is not expensive? Just tell me why the fact I believe he cut off the price because eventually it was too expensive is such a stupid idea? This time, I don't understand your post.

@stoneunhinged

It cost me a lot to build my library. But things are very variable. Some books aren't very expensive at all. Abebooks and dozen of services like that allows to find treasures at very good conditions. Just from memory, I've purchased McDougall's books or Garcia's, or Scarne's, etc. at less than 10 bucks, and believe me, very often in excellent shape! Sometimes you need to pay 50$, sometimes 150$. It depends the books, years, dollar fluctuations and so on. Sometimes I just get a reprint. Sometimes an original. There's really no definitive rule. To me, the point is to get the text. If I can afford an original, it's OK. I didn't steal a book, but I can assure you some have been paid with sucker's bankroll .

Anyway, to me 100+ for a book, it's a lot of money. But everyone has a different point of view about money, I understand that.

Is this information supposed to be somehow helpfull ? 6 Methods to determine a twentyfold difference ? What exactly do you conclude by this "information" ?



Really. Did it occur to you that books had a different value at that time ? Books where rare and expensive. No mass paperback market back then.

In your need to have a go at Erdnase and his book your jumping to conclusions.

Regards,

AMcD my post was definitely not an attack, perhaps a prompt for more critical thinking, but nothing intended to be an attack directed at you.

I enjoy reading most of your posts AMcD , and have no incentive to engage you in anything beyond well thought out discussion.

If "Expert" was in fact too expensive, why ask such a high price in the first place?
Erdnase had been around and knew what books sold for. Perhaps because "Expert" was the first of its kind, Erdnase had been led to believe that it would fetch far more than the hustlers in 1902 could afford, or thought the material was worth.

Because we have no clear indication from Erdnase (or anybody else) who the book was originally intended to be sold to, it's difficult to know why he asked such a high price and subsequently why it was deemed important to lower it.
Although it seems obvious that prices are lowered because something isn't selling, my point is that it could be just as likely that in Erdnase's case, the price was lowered because Erdnase changed his entire target audience for the book, and adjusted the price to a level that was more common in books aimed at that target audience.

He could have sold 300 copies to all the hustlers he knew, and then the market dried up while he still had 700 additional books to sell.
In this scenario, he would have had to change his target market, or be forced to sit on those 700 books indefinitely.

All the above ideas as to why the price was lowered are hypothetical, but feasible enough to think that there was more to lowering the price than simply that the original marked price was too high.

Dick Hatch goes into the topic of "Experts" price reduction in the new Ackerman/Munari DVD project if you think you'd enjoy a more lengthy look at the topic.

(AMcD, with all due respect perhaps you're not looking for an in depth discussion about the book and issues like why the price was reduced, if that's the case, just say so and I won't interject further thoughts towards your posts on this topic ).

Interesting point of view. I admit I didn't think about such a possibility.

I enjoy reading your posts too mainly because you look like pretty learned on the subject. But you must undertand that from my own perspecive it's not that easy to take for granted every material yet said about Erdnase. We have not even a clear idea about who is was...

It seems that everything is definitely cast in stone when we talk about this book! A lot of mysteries are alive though. Just to take an example, in your opinion, what was the point to put a "cheating" section and a "legerdemain" section in the same book?

AMcD, I don't know.

Knowing who Erdnase was would go a long way to helping us understand what he was trying to accomplish when he wrote the book, and why he mixed magic with cheating the way he did.

Don't forget the first 21 or so pages of the book as well. Along with card tricks and sleights, Erdnase delivers a comprehensive manifesto for the ages on cheating at cards.

Why did Erdnase combine these three topics in one small, expensive book?
Who did Erdnase intend to market the first edition to?
How successful was Erdnase's marketing of the first edition to his target buyers?
Did Erdnase grossly underestimate the number of his initial "target" buyers who would purchase the book?
Did Erdnase know his from the get-go that his original audience was small, and fully intend to re-brand the book for magicians when the hustlers dried up?

We know for sure that he (and others) began to offer the book to magicians in 1903, but it's how the book was marketed and sold in the first year after its initial publication that we know nothing about.

All great questions in need of answers.

In my opinion, it's nearly impossible to understand the books true purpose until we determine the identity of Erdnase himself.
The search for the man represents more than just knowing who he is in order to solve the mystery, but would provide a needed perspective (that's been missing for 100 or so years) on the authors intent for the book itself.

Okay. Let's hope it'll be possible to determine his identity one day or another.

End of topic for me. Thanks to all for the different advices.