Retail is for suckers
July the 27th, 2025 In Brazil, we have used bookstores called sebos (grease), which in addition to books sometimes deal in CDs, vinyls, artworks, and general knick-knacks. I live in the countryside, and here it's pretty barren sebo-wise, but there's this place in the next town over that's been my preferred location for years.
I usually go there, to this town, twice or thrice a year with my family. It's a very profitable affair: I don't have to pay for the trip, and can usually manage to trade worthless paper weights I don't want for stuff I do want. That's the beauty of it, I'm practically getting things for free.
Yesterday I've managed to acquire a 1952 Encyclopaedia Britannica edition of the first two volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and a copy of Puyo Pop Fever for the PS2, in exchange for a couple of my brother's manga, a manual of photography and a copy of Mega Man Star Force 2 for the DS. Not to say that Star Force 2 is worthless, but it doesn't make much of a difference to me whether or not I own it (as a matter of fact, I've never even played it), whereas the former is a title I can display proudly on my bookshelf even if I'll probably never spin the disc itself.