The Perfect Song Blog

In my previous post, I confessed how creating a website devoted to William Ard reactivated my addiction to vintage paperbacks, and eBay was the great enabler.

Ard died quite young and produced a limited body of work. It didn’t take me long to acquire the titles I needed. One night while poking around I decided to search for vintage paperbacks in general.

What in God’s name was I thinking? I lived and breathed vintage paperbacks throughout the 1990s. I traveled to flea markets, rummage sales, and participated in phone auctions (antiquated, yes, but that’s what we did in that century.)

List upon list unfolded before me. I scrolled through, pulling up individual lots, telling myself there might be an Ard title in the collection. But in truth, it was to savor the covers and titles. It all came back to me. I realized I could tell at a glance whether a book was worth anything by the publisher, author or cover art. I knew the publishers’ logos by heart from years of studying paperbacks.

I knew cover artists, and of course, authors. I found a particularly good copy of John D. MacDonald’s The Brass Cupcake. Well, I thought, just one. I can stop with just one.

I put in a bid.

I came across a near mint copy of The Luscious Puritan, a worthwhile investment just for the cover. One more won’t hurt, I convinced myself.

By the week’s end I was bidding on 15 items. I checked the bids every night. Sometimes I checked them at lunch hour at the office. I checked the email for notes from sellers. I did more searches. At night, even before I worked on my Ard site, which is my passion, I had to check eBay. Two hours later I would rip myself away, reminding myself of the addictive nature of all this.

I realized that there is no such thing as “social bidding.”

I had not only fallen off the wagon, I looked around and the wagon was nowhere in sight.

I’m not going to fight it anymore. I’m an addict and I admit it. I can’t stop with one or two bids. I’m in a sea of books and they’re all for sale. For sale by bid, the most seductive, adventurous, adrenaline-pumping way of buying.

It’s the search, the chase. It’s that initial bid and the sense of competition, the need to stay in the fight when another person outbids you. Your mind becomes distorted. Reality changes. You are committed to winning.

You learn to hate seeing the message “you’ve been outbid!” It’s like an admonishment, as if you’re a lesser person. You go to the box that says you have to bid at least 10 percent more. In fact the grand eBay Poobah tells you the minimum you can bid.

You type in the numbers and hit the bid button. If it says, “you are still outbid,” you put in more numbers . It’s so easy. “Congratulations, you are the high bidder!” Yes! I did it. I beat the other person . . .for the moment.

Losing hurts. It’s a lonely feeling. But if you’re a real addict, you know life goes on and you immediately continue onto new searches, new bids, new rounds. . . .

Friends told me to relinquish control, that the addiction is beyond a mere human. I must turn myself over to God and let Him help.

I did. I turned it over to Him, then put in a bid on a very rare pocket book copy of The Old Testament.

I knew all was lost when a pop-up screen told me: “You’ve been outbid, by God.”

Enough. I’d like to hear from you. Are you an eBayholic? Tell me about it. Share your story.  Use “comments” or email me at theperfectsong@gmail.com