The Making of a Fly

What was the most expensive book ever?
Stand-up Maths

Sure, I'll bite, what's the most expensive book ever? Matt Parker (because this is one his videos) skips over the one-offs and special collector editions and lands on The Making of a Fly which peaks my interest because of my acquaintance with a neurobiology student studying fruit fly brains. Then he explains what happens, and I realize that might explain a couple of other pricing anomalies I ran across.

The absurd price has since been brought to earth and you can now buy the book for about $25.

The Last Camel Died at Noon

Roberta X put up a post with this title. It seems it is also the title of a book, a murder mystery. You can buy a copy for a reasonable price from Amazon here. Or you can buy a copy for an insanely ludicrous price.

The Last Camel Died at Noon

I've run into this kind of weirdness a couple of other times. I suspect someone is running a scam where they are in a position to order things and no one is checking up on them.

Mystery Book

I don't understand this. How can an audio cassette be worth a thousand dollars? The CD version is available for a normal price, like $20. What makes the cassette version worth so much more? Then I got to thinking about this. Maybe it's kind of like credit card fraud.
    I suspect the reason credit card fraud is so prevalent is that it pays, and it pays because people don't check their credit card statements diligently. If you have a monthly credit card bill with a couple of hundred items on it, and most of them are for small ticket items, would you even notice it there were one or two or even half a dozen charges that you didn't make? If you were concerned about your balance you might be more inclined to check, but it you are only paying the minimum, well hell, why bother? You'll probably go bankrupt first anyway.
    So maybe this vendor is counting on someone just ordering this without looking at the price, or maybe they look at it but their expectations lead them to believe and it's really only $1.30. All those other numbers are just some kind of computer crap tacked onto the end.
    Or, if you want to get all criminally conspiracied, maybe the assistant to a rich person has cooked up a scheme with the vendor, knowing their employer's taste in books, they conspire to mark up the price on those books. The assistant orders the books at the inflated prices and they split the profits. If they are running up a hundred grand in credit card charges a month, who's gonna notice if an extra 5 or 6 grand goes missing? Especially it the assistant is the one paying the bills.
    It's not a bad scheme, but I can't take credit for it. I got it from a movie. Guy is house sitting some mansion and they are getting a tanker truck full of spring water delivered once a month (once a week? daily?), and delivery guy has a little scheme going on to tack a little something onto the bill. Not like whoever it is can't afford it. I mean who get's their tap water delivered by truck? Besides the army I mean.
     Well, there's the pro football player who get's the white carpets replaced in his house every month. The increasing number of wealthy people is driving an exponential growth in the scam business, legal and otherwise.