To Become A Pirate

All you need to become a pirate is to learn to say “Arrr-bi-trahz” with your head cocked to one side, your left eye squinted and a perfect leer plastered all over your face. Just don’t look at yourself in the mirror when you do it. They tend to crack.

Actually there is a fine line between true dastardly pirate-ness and legitimate arbitrage. Sometimes it’s only the line between being in jail or out of jail. But not everyone bothers to know the difference.

The main element required for a successful arbitrage is information. For better or worse, thetextbookgame.com provides a piece of that very information.

You can go to the website and type in an ISBN number. Within 24 hours you know exactly what price The Textbook Game will offer to buy back your book.

Next you, the astute student, go online and find an amazing steal of a deal. Quickly doing the math, you realize that you will still make money if you overnight the book to yourself. Finally you bring it to The Textbook Game to resell for a higher price.

But that’s a lot of work. It’s even easier if you already have the textbook sitting in your dorm or off-campus location and can just pick it up and carry it over and sell it. You can even go online and see who will get you the better deal? The University Bookstore, or The Textbook Game? Want to know who wins every time? Why don’t you find out!

Arbitrage

Arbitrage. Now that’s a fancy word! I like to say it slowly and roll it around in my mouth. If you say it with a nice grating sound, it even makes you sound like a pirate.

“Arrr-bi-trahz”

It even means something sort of piraty. Find goods sold at a low price in one area, buy them and transport them to a high price area for re-sale in order to reap the profits. Theoretically this only goes on for a short time before everyone figures it out and starts doing the same thing. Then the low prices go up because demand is higher and the high prices come down because the supply is higher. And then you have that fancy economic term called “equilibrium.”

But before the equilibrium comes the “arr-bi-trahz.” (That’s so much fun to say!)

It’s a word Gonga loves saying. But he probably has no idea what it means. He’s still working on picking up the day-to-day lingo required to represent The Textbook Game on the street. He doesn’t need to know fancy terms like arbitrage. (Yes, I am working very hard to develop his character while I wear his suit.)

Yet Gonga has been a first-hand witness to attempts at arbitrage, even though he may not have recognized it.