Dig This Treasure!

So a few weeks ago, I made reference to the fact that I found a copy of an Uncle Shelby (Shel Silverstein) book, Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros, that looked like it might be worth some dough. Refresher:

I grabbed the book in the basement of the sale on a shelf with some cookbooks. As you probably noticed from the pictures of that basement “motherload,” there was a lot of stuff down there, and not all of it was nice or in good shape. Refresher #2:

Behind a staircase (where I was standing while taking the above photo), I spotted a shelf of books. I have a pretty good spidey sense for valuable children’s books, so I noticed the Silverstein book among the 1970s cookbooks right away. 

I listed it on eBay that night. There were two watchers all week, but no bids. Because I’m greedy, I tried changing the price around a few times (adding a “Buy it Now” option, reducing the starting price, etc.), but nothing seemed to kick those watchers into gear. The other thing I forgot to mention was that, because I listed the book that Friday evening, it ENDED the following Friday evening at 11:54 p.m. That’s the best possible time for an eBay auction to end, right? 

Anyway, nobody bid and I went to bed that night feeling pretty sad, realizing that I had been duped about the value of this book. But about 20 minutes after falling asleep I was startled awake by the lovely noise that your iPhone makes when someone has bid on your item on eBay, and cheered gleefully when I realized that someone had come in and sniped that sucker at the last minute! It sold for $152. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. 

This morning, while I was discussing blog content with Erin, this happened: 

I then blew her mind by showing her this:  

Many laughs were had by all. 

-Sarah