Interesting Books Auction

[Tim Harding]

I know the Chess Lund site owners Per Skjoldager (co-author of a book on Nimzowitsch BTW) and Carl Eric Erlandsson and consider them trustworthy. The fact that you got a reply when you were not expecting one tends to support that.

Also I think the obsession with https is overstated. I don't think that has the importance it had when first introduced; now it can just mean the site has to pay a lot more money unnecessarily to its hosting service.

If a site like their Lund Chess Auctions (and my chessmail,com) does not track users (especially does not place cookies) or collect personal financial data then it's probably a safer site to visit than many which do. So browsers that flag non-https sites as "Not secure" are not necessarily being helpful.

Any purchases via PayPal keep financial matters entirely separate from my site; it's the same with the very reputable publisher Quality Chess, for example.

My recollection from using Lund auctions in the past is that if you bid and you don't succeed then you are not sending them any personal data, If you win an auction then you will be sent their back account details to make a payment and they will mail the book when they get your money. If they are acting as an intermediary for a seller like Mokry perhaps the procedure differs,

[John Upham]

As a follow-up to TDHs reply I would comment that I have bought a number of items via the Lund auctions from Paul Lonergan (Miesque) and I have always received prompt and extremely courteous service.

I am completing my run of BCM bound volumes from 1881 until 2015 and likewise for CHESS and CHESS Monthly. A few gaps remain...

[Paul Heaton]

I am completing my run of BCM bound volumes from 1881 until 2015 and likewise for CHESS and CHESS Monthly. A few gaps remain...

Is there a reason you stop at 2015 for BCM? I think that was the year your own association ended.

[John Upham]

I am completing my run of BCM bound volumes from 1881 until 2015 and likewise for CHESS and CHESS Monthly. A few gaps remain...

Is there a reason you stop at 2015 for BCM? I think that was the year your own association ended.

I spent much effort and heartache attempting to convince Stephen Lowe and Shaun Taulbut (owners since 19th September 2005) to continue the production of annual bound volumes (BVs) of BCM. Sales were low due to many factors including minimal marketing spend and the rapidly dwindling subscriber base whose average age was well north of seventy years old. Essentially, the subscribers were passing away without being replaced.

We used a retired monk bookbinder called Lee from Priory Binding (whose work was superb) and I would take monthly copies plus an Index to Lee for binding.

The reasoning of the owners meant that Stephen wanted to see payment for orders BEFORE we had stock which did not work. I could not announce stock for sale therefore!

On one occasion we ordered 20 BVs from Lee and he duly produced them and I collected them from his workshop in Farnborough / North Camp. However, despite SL being a millionaire BCM refused to pay for them on alleged cash flow grounds and so Lee asked for them to be returned. I, grovingly, returned them and held never felt so embarrassed!

SL also decided to break with previous tradition established for many years and NOT include the Index for year X with the January issue of year X+1 gratis and this provoked much protest from James Pratt (the then editor) and myself. Shaun remained silent (as usual) on the matter and deferred to SL. A decision was made to print the Index separately and force subscribers to purchase them for £2 or some such ludicrous sum. I posted them out for free as I could not be bothered asking for £2.

After much pressing 2014 was BCMs first (!) year of full colour production (the first full colour month was February 2013) but in the run-up to Christmas 2015 SL decided not to have any more BVs produced and no more Indexes printed.

Many other regrettable and ludicrous decisions led to myself stepping down from BCM in December 2015. James P. had stepped down a few days earlier.

We were both paid £75 per month to work for BCM and we put our heart and soul into it from April 2011 until December 2015.

BTW, there was a tradition that ex-editors of BCM were provided with a subscription to BCM for life. These were all cancelled by SL. I know JDP was quite upset by this and I was simply dumbfounded.

This is my reasoning to go until 2014 / 2015. Of course, there is no reason to stop subscribers taking their monthly copies to have them bound by their preferred bookbinder.

[John Upham]

The most recent auction

http://www.chesslund.com/storecatalog.asp?userid=356

includes a rather nice copy of

The Bristol Chess Club

plus some very early BCM BVs

Do I plug those gaps or not....?

[John Townsend]

John, I would say it depends on your reasons for acquiring chess books. Some would normally only buy them to read and use, so Burt's The Bristol Chess Club they would probably give a miss because it can be viewed on Google Books - at the moment, anyway. If you are a collector, it may be another matter, as you may then want to buy books which you can admire without using them much.

I hope you already have the 1881 B.C.M. for the sake of your pocket money. When I looked at it yesterday, the "current price" was 600 euros.

I find the manuscript lots the most fascinating, e.g. Staunton letters.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Many other regrettable and ludicrous decisions led to myself stepping down from BCM in December 2015. James P. had stepped down a few days earlier."

I won't copy all of the above, but that does sound awful. I was told by someone who wrote a series of articles for them that he had given up as they were refusing to pay the agreed amount to him. I do not know if they did later.

[John Upham]

"Many other regrettable and ludicrous decisions led to myself stepping down from BCM in December 2015. James P. had stepped down a few days earlier."

I won't copy all of the above, but that does sound awful. I was told by someone who wrote a series of articles for them that he had given up as they were refusing to pay the agreed amount to him. I do not know if they did later.

Kevin,

After starting at BCM in April 2011 (Steve Giddins was the outgoing editor) I attended a 4NCL weekend. I introduced myself and my new role to John Nunn and he told me that BCM owed Petra £60 for a photograph. I already knew that obtaining expenses was a tortuous and lengthy process and I was not prepared to fob them off and so I paid John £60 with cash I had with me. I had a similar difficult meeting with Ian and Cathy Rogers at the FIDE candidates. I found out that Les Blackstock was yet to be paid for ancient work on an Index. At a BCM meeting I put an ultimatum to SL and SMT that they needed to be honest with me about who was owed money otherwise I would cease work immediately. The list was not small to say the least! I attempted to get the publisher Chess Stars on board for book reviews. They indignantly informed me they would not send me any books for review until stock had been paid for.

I managed to get a number of persons owed money paid but not everyone. Another stupidly embarrassing series of episodes during my time with BCM.

I attempted to restore the supply of Cordex binders (of which we had zero stock when I started with BCM) fairly early on. The supplier would not supply them unless BCM paid in advance due to a past history of "payment difficulties".

What annoyed me about all of this was that I was being associated with these payments issues so I tried to make it clear that I wanted to get the payments sorted and a clean slate issued.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"What annoyed me about all of this was that I was being associated with these payments issues so I tried to make it clear that I wanted to get the payments sorted and a clean slate issued."

The messenger gets shot too often... Their attitude seems odd, as if you annoy suppliers and writers, you don't get supplies or writing.