INFLATED PRICE BOOKS

[Guest]

Originally posted by crimsonking:

What is the Ron Cartlidge book?

Ron Cartlidge publishes an annual with prices realized of magic books, props, ephemera culled from online auctions (eBay, Martinka, KT Magic, etc.). This provides a useful snapshop of the previous year's activity (each annual is independent of the previous). We'll be stocking his most recent version soon and still have a few of his 2004 Blue Book of Magic in stock at the published price of $25 (a search on "Cartildge" on our site www.magicbookshop.com will turn it up).

[Brad Henderson]

Bill,

"red book"? Which one is that?

Brad

[Kevin Connolly]

Collectors in the East call the Albo series, "The Big Red Brick". Maybe it's that one.

[Guest]

I was assuming it was Goldstein's RED BOOK OF MENTALISM... Bill leaves for a tour of Germany this week, so may not see these questions if he is already en route...

[Guest]

The Blue Book of Magic tracks several auction sites, both live (such as the Collectors' Meeting auction in Washington, D. C.) to internet auction sites (such as Martinka's, K.T. Magic, eBay, etc.) so that you don't have to do it. It's all compiled in one book and there has been an annual edition since 2004. Hopefully these will be available at H&R Magic Books in the very near future. Since we are on the topic of inflated book prices, yes, many books sell for beyond the imaginable price that you would think a book should go for on eBay. By tracking several different sites for sales of the same book, you then get a better picture of the real worth of a book. On eBay, a particular book may go for a high figure one day and a low figure the next. You never know. It depends on when and a lot of times how the book was posted. Thanks to Richard and Bill for mentioning my book!

[Guest]

The "Red Book" I was referring to was Goldstein's "Red Book of Mentalism," which fetched over $400 on an eBay auction a couple of years ago.

Shortly after that, there was a spate of that series that hit eBay with ridiculous starting prices. Some people purchased them at those high prices, though, which created further interest in the old series.

The fellow who paid the high price for the book is a man who has a job that places an incredible demand on his time. So he placed a ridiculously high bid in order to secure it. This did not mean that ALL subsequent copies of the book would bring that much money -- as other owners of the booklet found out!

Collecting works like this. There are a limited number of widgets out there. There is a certain number of collectors out there. If there is a collector who really wants something and has a lot of money, he will basically force out the collectors who can't afford to compete with his bid. But once he has filled various slots in his collection, the auction price of those widgets may go back down again.

A lot of people felt that the MM copies of the PF cups was going to ruin their market value. It didn't. The cups have steadily increased in value in spite of the MM cups. It actually may be because of the MM cups. They are not difficult to spot, if you have a few sets of the real thing. But even then, the amount that a set of cups will bring at auction depends entirely upon how badly someone wants it, and how many other collectors are participating in the auction.

The fact is that most of the people who own the original cups do not want to part with them. So the collectors usually have to wait for an estate sale or a sale in which the owner of the items is forced to sell his collection in order to make ends meet.

It works the same way with books. Books actually go through cycles. There will be times when Ricky Jay books are really hot. Other times, you may not be able to give them away. The actual print run has little to do with it. It's the number of copies that are in circulation that counts.

Remember when I mentioned the original edition of "Illustrated Magic?" It took me 14 years of waiting to get a copy. Within 3 years, I had acquired three copies, one of which I gave away.

You will find the same thing with all sorts of other items. For years, an item may not show up on eBay. Then you see four or five of them in three month's time.

Just make it a habit to search at least once a week, if not more often.

[Guest]

I didn't want to open a new topic for this little demand..
I have just received the Chuck Romano book about patents, and it is great!
In the introduction by Mr.Steinmeyer he mentions that Lafayette in England filed his patent of the Lion's Bride under: "agricultural appliances", in order to protect its secret.
Hence my question:
Why did'n also the other magicians use this system in order to both patent and hide their discoveries?
Or had Mr.Lafayette's invention also some realtions with agricultural appliances, in order that he was allowed to file his invention there?
Waiting for an answer of yours..
Regards.
Crim

[Guest]

He must have had some way of disguising it as an agricultural device. In the US, the patent examination process is such that if the device will not actually do the job it is supposed to do, it will not be granted a patent. There must be a working model, etc.

I doubt that he could have gotten away with it in the US.

[Guest]

Does a registered patent have an expiration date or it last forever in the U.S patent office?
Or has it to be renewed?
Because i put some patent numbers in www.uspto.gov which i found in Mr.Romano book , but it says that they don't exist!

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Per the USPTO website, you can do a full text search on all patents registered since 1976, and you can see full page images (by searching on the patent number) for all patents since 1790, when the Patent Act was first adopted. You should be able to find any U.S. patent in the system if you know the number.

And yes, patents do expire (17 years for patents filed before June 8th, 1995, 20 years for patents filed after that date). But all the information will still be in that database.

-Jim

[Guest]

First of all,
i was mistaken about the patents numbers.
I put in the wrong numbers in the site.
Now i tired again and they do show up!
Then,
if a patent expires..who has the right to renew it?Maybe the relatives of the original patent filler?

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Patents cannot be renewed. From their website:

"No, you can't renew a patent after it expires. However, patents may be extended by a special act of Congress and under certain circumstances certain pharmaceutical patents may be extended to make up the time lost during the Food and Drug Administration's approval process. After the patent expires, the inventor loses exclusive rights to the invention."

-Jim

[Guest]

"I have just received the Chuck Romano book about patents, and it is great!"

I am glad that you are pleased with that title and am very glad that it and it's mate arrived so quickly and in pristine condition to an international purchaser.

R. N.

[Guest]

Originally posted by Bill Palmer:
He must have had some way of disguising it as an agricultural device. In the US, the patent examination process is such that if the device will not actually do the job it is supposed to do, it will not be granted a patent. There must be a working model, etc.

I doubt that he could have gotten away with it in the US.

I found this on Randi's site:
"Examiners assess patent applications according to four criteria: novelty, usefulness, non-obviousness and enablement, the last of which means that the patent application must disclose how to construct the patented device. . . . Statements in a patent application are presumed true unless a good reason for doubt is found. The device has only to be 'more likely than not' to work."

I guess you could use it to change a girl into a plough. :cool:

Seriously, there seem to be lots of patents issued to devices that don't--and can't--work. Free energy/perpetual motion machines, dowsing rods etc.

kinda off topic here...sorry

[Guest]

Originally posted by crimsonking:
In the introduction by Mr.Steinmeyer he mentions that Lafayette in England filed his patent of the Lion's Bride under: "agricultural appliances", in order to protect its secret.
Hence my question:
Why did'n also the other magicians use this system in order to both patent and hide their discoveries?

Perhaps because:

1. It doesn't really make any difference. How many people who've seen David Copperfield fly have gone to the trouble to examine the patent documents of the apparatus? Very few.

2. I think inventors make affitdavits (under penalty of perjury, I believe), attesting to the truthfulness of their claims (but I'm not sure, and welcome the input of someone who knows).

I once got an email from Thomas Wayne in which he said that some of the patents associated with the Kohler holdout were in the name of relatives of his (who didn't have the surname "Wayne"), and they purposefully obscured the uses of the device (and were not categorized as "conjuring devices") so that it would be hard for people to back-engineer what they did.

I expressed the opinion that the whole purpose of society granting him/Kohler/Fitch/Porper a monopoly on the manufacturing rights was that we (the rest of society) get to see how they work, via public disclosure of the patent documents, and that he was cheating the system, and possibly being fraudulent. He said some rude things back to me and the conversation ended soon thereafter.

Anybody know the patent numbers associated with the Holdout? Are they printed with the materials that come with it?

[Richard Kaufman]

Thomas Wayne wrote rude things to you?
No ... how can it be?
hahahaha