Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Inner Geek Less than Gruntled by Amazon

So, if you hadn't heard or otherwise ascertained, my own little pet obsession lies in the vein of vintage farm tractors. I have over 100 1/16 scale die cast models, and a whole smattering of 1/32, 1/43, and 1/64, just to round out the collection. Every 2 weeks I receive a magazine on farming history that comes with a 1/43 (figure, 3" long) replica of the model concerned within the covers.

Agrogeek is the term I have penned.

And I have accepted this. I inherited the disease from my mother's father, who, like me, would have a different vintage tractor to drive for every day of the year, if funds allowed. That not being the case for either of us, we collect die cast replicas. I haven't seen him in about a year and a half, having been overseas, but on one of the last occasions that we shared a Mountain Dew (which, dadblastit, ain't for sale in the UK) on the front porch, we jointly lamented the amount of literature available to such agrogeeks as ourselves. (Though, at the time, the term didn't exist)

The problem, as he put it, was finding a book on tractors that didn't know less than ourselves. To clarify: I had recently purchased a book entitled "The Complete History of Farm Tractors" by Merco de Cet. By the time I gave up reading it, not even halfway through, I had managed to fill every inch of blank space inside both covers with information he'd left out: models, brands, dates, facts, et cetera. I was incensed. While the casual, less acquainted non-agrogeek can be placated with any of the coffee table offerings for sale at your local international literary retail chain, goofballs like me need encyclopaedias of facts, libraries at our finger tips, enough photographs to wallpaper a barn.

So, imagine my joy when I learned that there was a book published in '04 (pronounced ot-four, just for the fun of it) entitled "The BIG Book of Massey Tractors: The Complete History of Massey-Harris and Massey-Ferguson Tractors... Plus Collectibles, Sales Memorabilia, and Brochures"!!

Incidentally, I DO know that this is my most boring blog ever. Bear with me, the rant begins shortly.

Now, aforementioned book only had one printing run, and as such is hard to come by. On Amazon, it tends to run over $130. So, when I saw a used hardback copy for about 40 bucks, I bought it. Here, for those who haven't navigated elsewhere, is what I expected to see when I opened the package that duly arrived 3 weeks later from (ostensibly) the Atlanta Book Company:

Imagine, then, if you naively think that you possibly can, the inner turmoil and betrayal I felt when I opened a package from Auburn Books of Auburn, Washington to find this paperback:

Now, as it happens, I used to be quite the Coca-Cola enthusiast. Somewhere, in some barn or shed in Northwest Arkansas, are stacks of boxes full of my Coca-Cola collection. I will read the book, but EGAD! Surely you can see the lack of similarities between the 2 books. I can see three words in common: the, history, and collectibles. And, as my purchase went thru on Amazon.co.uk, using the name 'Atlanta' on one's international shop front rather convinces the party of the second part that your company is located in Georgia. How in the world some company in Washington cottoned on to the idea of sending me a paperback on Coca-Cola in lieu of the hardback on Massey Harris that I expected to arrive from Georgia is enough to make me blog in a blind fury.

Welcome to my world.