A bargain at any price

Here's a little bit of information that's worth sharing ... which is exactly what I did.

My lovely wife recently took a look at the book listing for "Rayzor's Edge" by Rob Ray on Amazon.com. She was happy to see that it was the best-selling hockey book in America as of this morning. Admittedly, there is not much new competition here. Most hockey books are released in the fall, while this one is coming out in trade paperback at some point in the future because the original one sold out so quickly.

(FYI, no one seems too sure when the book will be printed as a trade paperback, so if you stumbled here through a search engine, my only advice is to be patient.)

Then she looked at the used book listing for "Rayzor's Edge." You can see the entire page by going here.

You read correctly. Someone has put a $315 price tag on a book that cost $20 new in November, and will cost $16 when it comes out in paperback later this month.

I was ready to make my own jokes about that one. Such as, "For $315, I'll drive the book to your house and read it to you." Or, "Call the Federal Reserve Board, inflation really is getting out of hand." You get the idea. I sent the link via e-mail to my friends, who keep me humble on such matters, and they came through:

"Yeah, but it's in very good condition. You can't put a price on that."

"Yikes. Printed in gold with diamonds on the periods, semicolons and commas?"

"I'll take a dozen!"

"You're good, my friend, but not THAT good!!"

"And worth every penny."

"I'll sell mine for $300. Including shipping."

"Wow! A collectors' item already. Your book is doing better than my 401K."

"I thought for a second that maybe it was an autographed copy, but that would have decreased the value."

As Bill Simmons of ESPN.com would say, yup, these are my readers.