My days of throwing money at shiny things are in the past. I rarely frequent bookshops, once upon a time a source of wallet-loosening. Now I find them mostly a waste of time, or an excuse to go look at new items that have escaped my attention. I stay away from eBay, and my ComicArtFans gallery gathers dust even as I find new excuses not to buy new art.

So yesterday was terrible.

It began in the morning, when I woke up debating with myself about whether I should really try to get one of the Mondo Looper posters that were due to go for sale in a few hours. Unable to decide, I reached office early anyway, where I spent a few minutes with my boss in the kitchen, as he made fun of me for getting in at that (by my standards) ungodly hour. At 8:55, my alarm rang, and I hurried to the Mondo website. Made it in time for Dredd and Looper posters to show up, added them to  my cart, and was about to pay for them when….

…I closed my browser. Took a deep breath. Waited a minute, and then went back to work. I mean, seriously, I was going to drop $50 on the poster of a movie that I hadn’t even seen. Would it be one of my top 5 movies? Hell no! Would it be my favorite movie of the year? Uh huh. So there, I saved myself $50, and I felt proud of myself.

But then I began thinking about what were my top 5 movies, and wondered how many of them did have Mondo posters. There was Tyler Stout’s Kill Bill poster, which always struck me as a little too busy, too cluttered for my eyes. But it still had the nice grindhouse vibe to it. Too bad it was selling for upwards for 450$. Not my cup of tea at the moment. Then I remembered the Totoro poster, the one that got away. I was in Romania when the Mondo guys made the drop, sipping on a cup of rooibos and diligently clicking refresh on the page every few minutes. I was determined to own that print at the cost price. But a colleague Skyped me about something important, and I headed out to respond to her without having to type a lot. I come back a minute later, and it was all over. My rooibos was not even cold, it was over that quick.

So I looked around a bit at the forums I hang out, and saw a bunch of Totoro prints for sale, at prices that lay somewhere between astronomical and batshit-insane. There was however a panic sale going on, and being the kind of ruthless low-baller that totally takes advantage of panicky merchants, I shot off a PM, asking him if he would accept my low-ball offer (which, come to think of it, was not that low-ball. It was the six-month average selling price for the piece. Thereabouts. Give or take a few tenners. Mostly take.) As it turns out, he did accept my offer, and I realized, with a silly grin on my face, that I had actually gotten one of my top 5 movies up on the wall of my future apartment. A definite improvement over Looper, I would say.

Then I sipped my coffee and flipped through my Facebook feeds, where an update about GTO: The Early Years made me pause. Apparently it was getting over with volume 15, out very soon indeed. Which made no sense, because I had always thought it was a 31-volume series. Hasty realization: the US reprints were oversized, covering two volumes’ worth of material in one. No wonder. This meant that I needed to get up to speed with the adventures of Onizuka before he became Onegai Sensei Onizuka as soon as I could. Not an easy task considering that the series had two publishers, one of whom went bankrupt and all its catalogue went out of print – that was Tokyopop, for those who came in late, who had brought 10 volumes of the series out last decade. Volume 8, in particular, was selling for 50$ and above in the secondary market. The others could be obtained second-hand, off Amazon sellers or eBay. Vertical publishing was coming out with the last 5 volumes of the series.

On an impulse, I looked up eBay, and hit a 20$ best-offer on a set of the first 4 volumes. The seller accepted within 5 minutes, and as soon as I completed payment, he changed status to “shipped”. That was…quick. The package got here 3 hours ago. Probably the fastest eBay shipping EVER.

At this point, I was done with my shopping for the month. I should not have opened the email from bargaingraphicnovels that said “IDW Sale”. I should have deleted it without even opening the dang thing. But I did, and seeing the 70% discount on books that I had always wanted weakened my soul. The final pass, after much culling of the shopping cart, involved the complete Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse hardcovers by Ben Templesmith (I mean, at $7 each? Why not?) and The Cape hardcover by Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella and Zach Howard. That will get signed at the next Wondercon, for sure. It felt a little better when pal Pablo agreed with me at the sinful nature of the discounts, and joined in the revelry.

You thought that was it? That was not it. In the evening, I was reading Oishinbo, and was thinking about how much fun it would be to read something like Eden, which was out of print too. Impulse check on eBay, seller with a full run at a deep-discount price, and also selling Sho Fumimura and Ryoichi Ikegami’s Sanctuary, another must-have. I stopped thinking. At that point, I felt unclean already. I closed my eyes, thought about lust and self-control and the need to avoid eBay for a couple of months. And then I opened my eyes and bought both the lots. Because sometimes, the retail-gods win. They win hard.

Update: 24 volumes of Gantz for 175$. At 7.1$ per volume, with free shipping? Going for it.