Twenty years ago, Half.com was the place you went to buy books, CDs, VHS tapes, and games at half the original price. That was a most excellent arrangement. But then eBay bought Half and prices were set free, and that was even better! Salvagers who bought unwanted books, CDs, and etc. by the pound began selling them for 75 cents each (a common price for books) and even a penny (uncommon, but I found some).
Half’s home page hasn’t moved a millimeter past 2005. The categories never changed: Books, Textbooks, Music, Movies, Games. Special D handled Half for the two of us early on. She did well there in the years before eBay’s takeover, clearing our shelves of excess books and fattening the pile of gold coins in the basement. I may not be remembering this exactly.
I’m going to miss all the reading and music I found so inexpensively on Half. When you’re a writer – when both of you are writers – inexpensive counts for a lot!
Last album bought on Half: Elvis Costello, Get Happy
Last book: Gail Caldwell, Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Last words: At least there’s still the library. And Bookmooch!
Run-DMSteve 
For books there is always ‘AddAll,’ which covers thousands of sellers and where you can buy the same book (title & condition) for $1 or $300 (some sellers don’t research the competition).
Belated thank you to loyal reader and bivalve mollusk wrangler Mr. Seaside for this recommendation. I’d never heard of AddAll. Looks good! Abebooks is another one. I don’t know how they compare. But what I really liked about Half.com was all the amateur sellers. Abebooks and AddAll look like they have more professionals. I could be wrong — who else is pricing common books at $300 except amateurs?
Wow. I haven’t thought about half.com in at least a decade. I have more recently thought about buy.com, but not since amazon.com started ceaselessly delighting me.
Double wow. I haven’t thought about Get Happy since half.com was a thing. Get Happy is a terrific album, um…disc, er…stream.
Sellers on Half were still offering VHS tapes right up to the closing bell! (VHS — that’s one thing I don’t collect.) I bought the Get Happy CD for $1.05, which was less than the shipping….I had this theory at the beginning of August that sellers would start dumping their inventories as we got closer to the end. Not so. Book prices dipped a bit, but CD prices climbed.