Secondhand stores offer in general "better" products because of the double curation:
- someone found the good interesting enough to buy it in the first place (1st curation)
- the store found it good enough to buy it again from the first owner (2nd curation)
> Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today?
No, it's even better because of the limited space they have to display the goods they want to sell: while online stores can show their full inventory, brick-and-mortar need to select what's most likely to sell.
This adds yet another level of curation: the store found the good valuable enough to be exposed to buyers, instead of keeping it in the back (3rd curation)
I find great music by randomly buying second-hand CDs from brick-and-mortar secondhand stores, thanks to this triple-curation,