Urgent help needed from U.S based Ebayer!!

[Nigel]

My current "The War of the Worlds: Evolution" academic work is stalled at present as I desperately need a particular copy of The Cosmopolitan magazine from 1897 for reference (copies and scans will not do as I need to verify the original text and layout as it was published). These are all but impossible to get in the UK. There is at the moment a seller on eBay who has a copy of the issue I need but does not ship internationally (or even accept questions so I can't ask if they will be prepared to ship). Is there a U.S based fellow Goodreader who would be able to assist by purchasing it and shipping it to the UK (obviously I will sent funds by Paypal beforehand - the auction has a buy it now of under $30 and is for 2 issues, the helpful person is welcome to keep the one I don't need - and then cover any shipping costs plus some compensation for the time and trouble of doing this). The helpful person will no doubt also get an honourable mention in the "with thanks to" prologue.

Clearly this is the request of a desperate man, but I have 750,000 words of text sitting around doing nothing until i can get a copy of this mag for reference.

With thanks,

Nigel

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Erm, sorry, Nigel. I'll leave this, and hope that you find a colleague in the States who can help you out, but as you can imagine this sort of request is rather unconventional, and resembles a lot of the so-called Nigerian Prince emails, so I'm rather uncomfortable with it appearing in our group.

Good luck with your research, hope you sort this out.

[Nigel]

I completely understand your discomfort Allison, and it's not the kind of thing I would ever want to ask but I've been after this magazine for some time, and I don't need anybody to spend any of their own money, just spend mine for me! Other colleagues have helped in the past with providing U.S. reference materials so I thought I would ask here, but I completely understand if you'd rather delete this post - as you say, it is rather unconventional.

[Dawn F]

You seem genuine enough, especially because you offer to pay beforehand, and also it’s so specific and you actually know grammar. I’m in Denmark so I sadly can’t help you, but hope someone can!

[Nigel]

Thanks Dawn - this was always likely to be something of a long-shot as I suspect most people would rightly be very wary of a request like this, and it's only desperation that has me asking for this kind of help at all! In short, I have 8 of the 9 issues of Cosmopolitan from 1879 that had the U.S serialization of The War of The Worlds, but the ninth has eluded me for 2 years and the book has been stalled because of the missing issue. C'est la vie, another will eventually turn up no doubt, but it's hugely frustrating to get this close to a copy but yet be so far (namely the width of the Atlantic).

[Karin]

Nigel wrote: "Thanks Dawn - this was always likely to be something of a long-shot as I suspect most people would rightly be very wary of a request like this, and it's only desperation that has me asking for this..."

Have you contacted the ebay seller to see if they will make an exception?

[Nigel]

Hi Karin - yes, that was my first thought as well, but when I try the "ask seller a question" or "contact seller" options I just get a message saying "Unfortunately, this seller isn't able to respond to your question" - I knew an ebay seller could specify that they won't respond to questions, but I've not come across this before.I'm blocked from making any offer on the item because the seller has specified they don't ship to the UK, and that also blocks me from buying the item and then haggling about shipping. I'm pretty sure I've exhausted every other option through ebay, which is why I ended up asking for help on here. Trust me, it wasn't my first choice as I knew how it was likely to make me look, but needs must!

[Nigel]

The item has sold, so guess I'm waiting for the next one. Hopefully it won't be another 2 years! Whilst the majority of The War of The Worlds : Evolution is non-fiction, I have written a short story (though at 27,000 words I guess it's got delusions of novella-ness) , I'll start a new thread for that as I have a few questions to run by the good folk of Goodreads about illustrated stories....

[Andy]

I’m new here, so just saw this. If you see another one become available, I’d be willing to help you out...

Andy

[Nigel]

Thanks for that Andy. The issue I'm after seem to come up very rarely and it's unusual for a seller not to ship internationally, but if the situation comes up again I may take you up on the offer of help as I really need this issue! Thanks again.
Nigel