Decoding the Price Tags of Knowledge on Amazon | May 31 2025, 01:45

Clete Kushida has books on Amazon like “Sleep” for $1,895 and “Sleep for Dummies” for $22.99. Seems like it should be the other way around. He also has “Encyclopedia of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms” for $2,247.

If you search all books on Amazon and sort them from the most expensive to the cheapest, the top will feature books around $200. But if you hack the system a bit and adjust the URL with &low-price=…&high-price=…, then sorting by descending price reveals much more.

I decided to see what goes for big money on Amazon. For example, Topps has a listing for a 1952 baseball card set “1952 Topps Baseball Almost Complete Set – Premier (Baseball Set) EX+” priced at $354,530. The only comment says “Damn I could take a picture and print those for free”.

Mostly, items like diamonds, Hermes bags, and pre-fabricated houses are going for such high prices. Curiously, I looked into what’s in books. Naturally, the top consists of antiques, some mistakenly placed prices, and jokes.

But among these are real books for some unreasonable prices. For example, Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research By Filomena Maggino is sold at Harvard Book Store for $5,999. Or here’s Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance 2nd ed. 2022 Edition by Ali Farazmand for $7,999.99. Makes you wonder, does pricing it a cent below $8K justify itself? On Springer’s website, the electronic version of this book is sold for $3,500. Or you could rent it on Kindle for a couple of months for $2,000.

Or there’s also the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics in 14 volumes. On Amazon, this encyclopedia is priced at just under $100K, but it’s very easy to find other sites on the net that sell its electronic versions. What do you think an electronic version of this encyclopedia might cost? Prices are generally around $11,000 everywhere.

Among the rare books is RECOVERY: THE HOSPITAL DRAWINGS OF ALFONSO OSSORIO. Interestingly, this is just a book printed relatively recently, in 1995, in an edition of 100 copies, each individually numbered. And now these books are being sold for $4-5 thousand dollars. Well, that’s understandable, it’s collectible.