wingsandsword
Legend
Years ago (circa Spring 2001), I was part of a large, vibrant gaming club in college.
We had a huge gaming library, spread across a filing cabinet, the drawers of a desk, and a several wall lockers, in the student organizations center of our college. It was a pretty nice library, with every issue of Dragon going back to the club's founding in the mid '80's (and a few issues of more obscure gaming magazines as well), and dozens and dozens of gaming books of various systems (including a number of fairly obscure and hard-to-find books).
We had such a large library because our club had a rule that in lieu of a cash membership fee, someone could give a book as their fee for the year. . .and lots of people donated old or obscure books to the club for membership. A few people gave many books in exchange for lifetime membership.
Well, we had many people in our club, who would come down to the club offices in the student center and just sit and have lunch and hang out. . .and often take out old magazines and books and read them and discuss them, or play pick-up games.
We also had a FLGS across the street, maybe 500 feet away, just off campus. It was a decent FLGS, about half comic books and anime, and half games. Like many/most FLGS, they had at least some trade in used books and he kept a small bookcase in the back of the store where used books were for sale.
One day, someone went to get out a copy of our Planescape boxed set. The club had all the PS boxed sets in its collection. . .only to find the box had been emptied and a bunch of old issues of Dragon stuffed in the box to weight it down. A quick check showed that this had happened to all the PS box sets.
That same day, as we were wondering about this, someone mentioned that the used book shelf at the FLGS JUST got in the contents of all of the PS box sets. . .just without the boxes, the contents just bound together with a rubber band.
So, we went over to the neighboring FLGS and saw this was true. . .and the normally sparse used book section was now filled with books. . .and we recognized a lot of them as being fairly rare and obscure books that we had in our club collection.
Another quick check and we saw that our copies of these books were missing too.
So, the club leadership confronted the FLGS owner with this info, telling him they suspected that the books he'd just received as used were stolen from our club library.
His reply was something to the effect of "I don't care. Can't prove it."
He wouldn't tell us who sold him the stack of books, he wouldn't give us the books back, and wouldn't give us a discount on buying them back either. He made it clear he didn't care where the person who sold him the books (whoever it was) got the books, they were his now, and they were merchandise for sale, and given that some of the books were somewhat rare he was charging well over the cover price for some of them.
We filed a police report, and told the police that books fitting the description of our books were now in the used book shelf at the store across the street. . .but nothing ever came of it beyond that.
We ended up getting a stamp to stamp all our books with Property Of our club name and putting the books under lock and key, which cut down on the casual use of the books because only club officers had the key. Hanging out there was never quite the same after that.
Has anybody else seen anything like this, where the used-books shelf at a FLGS was used for clearly shady purposes, especially with the owner turning a blind eye?
We had a huge gaming library, spread across a filing cabinet, the drawers of a desk, and a several wall lockers, in the student organizations center of our college. It was a pretty nice library, with every issue of Dragon going back to the club's founding in the mid '80's (and a few issues of more obscure gaming magazines as well), and dozens and dozens of gaming books of various systems (including a number of fairly obscure and hard-to-find books).
We had such a large library because our club had a rule that in lieu of a cash membership fee, someone could give a book as their fee for the year. . .and lots of people donated old or obscure books to the club for membership. A few people gave many books in exchange for lifetime membership.
Well, we had many people in our club, who would come down to the club offices in the student center and just sit and have lunch and hang out. . .and often take out old magazines and books and read them and discuss them, or play pick-up games.
We also had a FLGS across the street, maybe 500 feet away, just off campus. It was a decent FLGS, about half comic books and anime, and half games. Like many/most FLGS, they had at least some trade in used books and he kept a small bookcase in the back of the store where used books were for sale.
One day, someone went to get out a copy of our Planescape boxed set. The club had all the PS boxed sets in its collection. . .only to find the box had been emptied and a bunch of old issues of Dragon stuffed in the box to weight it down. A quick check showed that this had happened to all the PS box sets.
That same day, as we were wondering about this, someone mentioned that the used book shelf at the FLGS JUST got in the contents of all of the PS box sets. . .just without the boxes, the contents just bound together with a rubber band.
So, we went over to the neighboring FLGS and saw this was true. . .and the normally sparse used book section was now filled with books. . .and we recognized a lot of them as being fairly rare and obscure books that we had in our club collection.
Another quick check and we saw that our copies of these books were missing too.
So, the club leadership confronted the FLGS owner with this info, telling him they suspected that the books he'd just received as used were stolen from our club library.
His reply was something to the effect of "I don't care. Can't prove it."
He wouldn't tell us who sold him the stack of books, he wouldn't give us the books back, and wouldn't give us a discount on buying them back either. He made it clear he didn't care where the person who sold him the books (whoever it was) got the books, they were his now, and they were merchandise for sale, and given that some of the books were somewhat rare he was charging well over the cover price for some of them.
We filed a police report, and told the police that books fitting the description of our books were now in the used book shelf at the store across the street. . .but nothing ever came of it beyond that.
We ended up getting a stamp to stamp all our books with Property Of our club name and putting the books under lock and key, which cut down on the casual use of the books because only club officers had the key. Hanging out there was never quite the same after that.
Has anybody else seen anything like this, where the used-books shelf at a FLGS was used for clearly shady purposes, especially with the owner turning a blind eye?
