Anders Liljegren
In April 2013, the AFU board formally decided to change the meaning of our AFU acronym from Archives for UFO research to Archives for the Unexplained. This reflects our widening area of interest within the paranormal field. Awaiting the needed approval from Swedish authorities the new name is, at the moment, in a state of limbo. We cannot fully use the it everywhere until we get the confirmation, but we believe you all know about AFU and what we stand for.
AFU receives donated collections “by the tons” from many parts of the globe. The number of un-needed copies of books & magazines is growing with every new donation. When, for instance, we have three copies of a book we would (generally speaking) waste space by adding copies number 4, 5 or 6 to our shelves. We now have thousands of items that we can offer to collectors and researchers in exchange deals or to sell to create new resources for the AFU foundation. You can rest assured that with the new AFU Shop we will not forget our exchange partners, but organizing exchanges is very time-costly and the AFU foundation urgently needs money to keep everything rolling. We are always open to exchange deals.
So, on AFU Shop you will find some 450 books & magazines, with the number increasing every week. Some items are extremely rare and thus highly priced, even in the 100-150 USD region. Others are offered at the bargain price of just 1 USD. We even sell “reading copies” that barely hold together, if you are just after reading the text and don’t need the very nice copy to display and be proud of. On the other hand, we also have items that are “New” (seemingly never read) or in nearly mint condition. We have looked at what seems to be the market value on sites like Abebooks, Amazon and eBay and then tried, generally, to be a little cheaper, without losing possible income for the AFU foundation.
We decided to always use US dollars and never with cents (thus no “9.99”-type prices), and to always use PayPal for the payments to make it simple for everyone. PayPal can now also handle bank cards so you don’t need to define a PayPal account. If you want to pay in some other way we are open for that.
This is a beginning. In our future plans we will put up a large number of magazines & magazine volumes to create space for incoming collections. Our total catalog as published on AFU Shop will become a permanent list of items that might turn up here, now and then, in new copies. When an item/edition/volume has sold out, for the moment, this will be apparent from the “Sold out" marking in the catalog, but there is always a hope for more copies in the future so we’ll keep the item listed. You can always check back later to see if new copies have arrived, or you can email us a request to be put on our wait list for that item whenever another copy comes in. To be the first in line. We have set up the afu.headq@gmail.com address to handle e-mails for the shop.
To keep the shop going we are very dependent on some success. When the monthly costs for the shop have been paid-off what’s left will go directly into our monthly budget. For the moment we are looking for money to pay for shipping collections to Sweden from the UK and to pay for a much-needed sign system to guide us - and our visitors - through the shelves of our 20.000+ volume library.
At AFU Shop you will also have the chance to become an international sponsor of AFU. If you like what we are doing you can sponsor us at the level that you choose. You will find AFU Sponsorship at the top of the Book menu. You can use the shop for sponsorship payments without buying books, or you can add a sponsorship when you buy one or several items from us. Please let us know if you would like to become a regular sponsor and we’ll keep reminding you every month, once each quarter or once each year.