An eBay seller named David reports working at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco when the New Yorker's then-cartoon editor Bob Mankoff and four other New Yorker cartoonists came to give a presentation. Their program promoted The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker (2004) and there was a signing session as well. David picked up a copy.
The book retailed at $60 (but Barnes & Noble advertised it in The New Yorker for $48). Publishers Weekly reported on the book's early success and its promotion, including the road show at the Commonwealth Club:
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| https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20041220/31109-a-heavy-hitter.html |
Black Dog & Leventhal, we read, printed 210,000 copies over three printings and budgeted more than $200,000 for book promotion. While I don't pretend to be a math whiz, I can calculate that the publisher was prepared to spend about $1 per copy to promote the book, and this sum included the cartoon editor's tour. The stop in San Francisco was unique in that it included four cartoonists—Leo Cullum, Alex Gregory, Bruce Eric Kaplan, and Jack Ziegler—whose signatures and sketches were difficult to obtain on the East coast. Cullum and Ziegler are no longer with us. Here then is what David had to offer:
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| Embellished for David by, alphabetically and somewhat clockwise from the top, Leo Cullum, Alex Gregory, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Bob Mankoff, and Jack Ziegler |
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| The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker eBay listing accessed March 21, 2021 |
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| The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker eBay item description |
Negotiation for this book on eBay proceeded over several weeks. A Best Offer of $56 was declined by the seller on March 21, 2021. The book's price increased from $101 to $107 on the subsequent listing, but soon the asking price was gradually lowered, eventually to $83. A new Best Offer of $60 received a seller counteroffer of $70. Finally, a Best Offer of $65 was accepted shortly before the auction closed.
When adjusted for inflation, the original publisher's price for the book of $60 would be $84.13 today. The $48 B&N price translates to $67.31 in 2021 dollars, pretty close to the $65 final eBay sale price.
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| https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2004-12-20/flipbook/084/ |
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