About six months ago I ordered a commentary of I Kings, by Cogan and Tadmor. One of the series of the Anchor Bible, it’s written by a couple of top scholars but is otherwise a rather ordinary commentary that was published in 2001. I ordered it from Amazon for about $30. Surveying a list of others in the series at Amazon indicates that $30 is the average price. Sometime after my order, Amazon sent me a message that the book was unavailable and the order was cancelled. Since that time I have kept my eyes out for it from another source, without success. Today I see that one is available from a bookstore in Hialeah, Florida for a mere $2,736.18. AmazonUK has another for $579. Now I have a few questions:
1. Is this book really so impossible to find?
2. How does a bookseller determine that the book is worth this much? Why not $999? Why not $52,799?
3. Is there any chance at all that someone out there will pay $2,736 for a book that’s only five years old, that will never have any special status, and that can easily be borrowed from a decent Bible college library?
4. If demand is so high, why does not Anchor put the book back in print? Or license reprint rights to someone like Wipf & Stock? After all, this is part of a major Bible commentary series.
BTW, I’m selling my copy of 2 Kings by Cogan and Tadmor for $3,214. Drop me an email if you’re interested. It’s really good.
you gotta wonder how they figured it was worth an additional 18 cents. I mean seriously.
Todd…I was cracking up in my school’s computer lab as I read this. Especially question 2. If you still really need that book, you may find a better deal by clicking here. I might add that in his amazon.com review, Stavros Deligiannis noted that “The more I study Mordechai Cogan’s 1 Kings the deeper I get into the original text and context of the book of 1 Kings and the more delighted with its content I become.” (italics added) (1) Even still, that sounds like a book worth no more than $850.37.
I remember trying to find this particular commentary in the IBEX library for some assignment I was working on. I was frustrated because there were other volumes from this series, but I couldn’t figure out why this one wasn’t there.
Now I know why…
Following tips from Josh and David, I “found” the book online and ordered it for $43, with shipping. But ordering is not the same as receiving. We’ll see.
The company wrote and said the book is not available. I found another place (also through froogle.com) and ordered there. They wrote and said the book is not available. That exhausts the places listed through froogle.com, and the cheapest I now know of is $585.79. Until someone snatches that up.
One word – conspiracy.
The II Kings edition is available all over. I thought I struck gold when I found a listing at the Fuller Theological Seminary book store. They had it listed for 37.50. Unfortunately, they are also “out of stock.”
or you could get the whole old testament collection for a mere $1400 from logos.
http://www.logos.com/products/details/5740