Snake America: Lucky 13
Snake is a bi-weekly email covering joints on eBay, Craigslist, YouTube, the analog world, along with errata, diet tips, etc...
https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/rugs-carpets/persian-rugs/grand-sultanabad-persian-carpet/id-f_1244998/ - ugs are a hard racket to get into, just like stamps or books. There are so many that it's a never-ending well of collecitibles. Kind of like how some classical music record collectors base their collections on catalog numbers, the ones on the sleeve spines that functioned, before barcodes, like UPCs and denoted when a record came out when. An especially obsessive collector might want everything on WEA covering the numbers 1002839-6570 through 1002839-6982, or something, which is a few years' worth, let's say, and 1002839-6777, or whatever, ends up being a bad rendition of a Glenn Gould kazoo sonata, so the LP batch was small and it goes for insane money (e.g. the Curt Flood card). But I'm not sure rugs are that infinite. Specifically, you can only have so many. And generally, anything which can be bought for money can be understood, and anything with a taxonomy can be researched and capitalized upon. It's not that hard. So go figure that the only time I've made out on a book at The Strand was re: a massive Rizzoli potboiler from 1984 on Persian rugs, half in Persian, that I picked up for $60 and runs $400 on ABE Books.
The one Persian rugs dealer that I've hung out with has a good geographic understanding of Iran, has been over there a few times and discusses each city's rug export and history with care and understanding, kind of like someone who goes to spring training every season. I also assume that every Persian rug is more or less worth $25,000, but then when I see them at like, the All Saints store on Broadway or some awful Miami jeans store I wonder who's doing the buying. As is the case with most things, a third party. But its really to these rugs' credit that they elevate the entire room. I could be at like an Tapas bar playing EDM and not serving Diet Coke and if they had those rugs I'd re-evaluate whatever I was doing. Maybe I should be wearing jeans with exposed pockets on the back of them? I also am not entirely sure how these businesses stay in business. I guess if you sell a dozen rugs a year, you're doing pretty, but how many do you pick up and fly back when you go to Tehran every year? What if your friend Reggie, who has the rugs, runs out? Are you going to have to abrogate your lease and go to law school? Doesn't it take like 18 months to make a rug? Aren't the old women who make these dying out and/or going to medical school instead? Part of me will never understand how someone might walk in to a store in the Flatiron and spend $50,000 on a Persian rug, though more of me doesn't understand how you don't buy one of these if you're worth $1,000,000,000 or something. Why live with money if you're going to live wrong? And anyone with this kind of budget to outfit a retail establishment ... more power to them, I would just take the rug and read until the money runs out.
http://item.ebay.com/151424885016 - 74 people are watching this Lada Niva 1600 Cossack auction on eBay motors. There's a lot going on with this auction. It's being sold out of Newburgh, N.Y. There is good and bad news, and the bad news is that the Lada Niva 1600 holds "some rust," mostly around the windows, and the interior is cracking, like many leather-seat Mercedes Benzes of the era do. The seller, ladiaslasdehoyos -- Ladislas De Hoyos was a French TV journalist who scored the first interview with Gestapo member Klaus Barbie, in 1972*, but it's probably not him -- tells of the car having a Jersey registration, Soviet plates and a Canadian owner, who ditched it. I wonder what happened there. I also have a few other questions. How does a Lada hold up this well for 24 years? Lada aficionado websites--of which there are many--distinguish between newer and older carburetor Lada Nivas, with the latter requiring a significant amount of mechanical literacy and elbow grease. This is one. But it's in good shape. Lada Nivas are somewhere between Renaults and Land Rovers, in both quality and design, a statement that, while true of half the cars being driven in Europe today, is not apparent at first and a nice aesthetic image to hold onto when thinking of Ladas. There is brisk interest in used Lada Nivas online, though none have sold on eBay for the past few months. I guess when you are that deep in the game, collecting used Lada Niva 1600 Cossacks, you go through back channels. Still, even Obama's kids are going to have to apply to college. Barring that, are any of the people watching De Hoyos' doing so for reasons other than design curiosity? What's De Hoyos' profit margin on a thing like this? Is there a reason why they're so popular in England? Is the user manual less or more helpful than this messageboard dedicated to the car? Is the Lada Niva vs. Land Rover A/B test very surprising, or not at all surprising? Were Russo-American tensions the reason behind Nivas not getting Blue Book values? Why is there a fifth wheel? And where is it?
Thanks so much for reading. Questions, tips, errors, complaints, etc. can be sent here. Tell your friends! Or enemies! Thank you again.
Snake
* Tremendous viewing. De Hoyos paints him into a corner, asking him a question in French, which he then answers in French. (He says he didn't speak it.) I tried to watch Shoah (France, 1985) on my Apple TV a little while ago but YouTube's subtitles don't work on that thing. I couldn't understand the Polish guy in the first scene. I should mention De Hoyos has passed on, so it's probably not him selling the Lada. In a just world, his memory outlives this or any car being sold on eBay today.