I have the craziest luck in the world. Last December Mo loaned me his Accounting book so I could use it for my Accounting class in the spring. Well, at the end of the semester, I completely forgot that it wasn’t my book either. I ended up taking the Mo’s book along with my other textbooks to buy back. I completely spaced out the fact that it wasn’t my book.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until almost a week later when it dawned on me that I needed to return the book, which I no longer had. I thought about my folly and pondered telling Mo what I’d done. That was option one. Option two involved buying the exact same book and just not telling Mo. I figured that he probably wouldn’t be able to tell that it wasn’t the book he loaned to me.<\/p>\n
However, the risk of option two is the cost. Even a used copy of the textbook costs over a hundred bucks. In the meantime, while I was mulling over my options, Mo beat me to the punch. He asked me if I was finished with the book.<\/p>\n
I finally had to come clean. I told him what happened and offered to give him the $50 that I got for the book during buy back. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his book. He completely spaced out that it wasn’t his when he loaned it to me. So now he had to return it to Dina, its rightful owner. I begged Mo to find out if Dina would be willing to accept the $50 in place of her book. He told me he would try to get her to accept my offer and get back with me the next day.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I scrambled for a back up plan. I had a feeling she probably would want her book back because Mo said she keeps all of her books. I searched everywhere and finally found the book on Amazon. Much to my amazement, I found someone willing to sell the exact same book — hard cover, US, 6th edition (not the soft cover, international version) — for less than $10. When Mo told me the next day that she really wanted her book back, I asked for her phone number so I could personally apologize for my flakiness and explain to her what happened.<\/p>\n
So I contacted Dina and told her what I had done. I also explained to her that I was in the process of getting the exact same book to replace the one that I had lost (read: accidentally sold at buy back). I told her it might be two weeks because of media mail. The book actually arrived in the mail on Wednesday, less than week from when I ordered it, so that was really nice. How lucky is that? Not only did I find the book for less, it even arrived sooner than expected. When you think about it, I actually came out ahead. I got $50 for it at buy back and was able to buy the book for $10. So I unintentionally turned a $40 profit with $0 investment.<\/p>\n
I shared my crazy story to April and Corey at poker on Wednesday. April commented that I should just buy a bunch of books on the cheap and sell them all at buy back. Instictively, I agreed. It seemed like a good idea. However, upon further inspection, it really won’t work. Or at least there is more risk involved than I would care to take on.<\/p>\n
For one, even if I could buy several books and sell them at buy back, it would seem really suspicious if I tried to sell back several copies of the exact same book or dozens of books that I wasn’t even enrolled in or have never taken. Secondly, new editions are released every time. Who hasn’t gotten screwed at buy back because the new edition came out and now your book is obsolete? If you end up buying several books in anticipation for buy back and then the new edition renders the books worthless. You lose money. Lastly, it always seems that when I plan or intentionally do something it doesn’t work out. My best laid plans are always foiled. So I’m better off just lucking out once in a while.<\/p>\n
I wish I could have had some luck at poker that night, though. I got knocked out pretty early. Brian did really well, though. He ended up taking first and winning a free seat to the BCPT. He’s been doing pretty well at poker lately. All we have to work on now is his sportsmanship. =P<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have the craziest luck in the world. Last December Mo loaned me his Accounting book so I could use it for my Accounting class in the spring. Well, at the end of the semester, I completely forgot that it wasn’t my book either. I ended up taking the Mo’s book along with my other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,16],"tags":[242,2753,2485],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15090,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/15090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}