It may depend on where you buy it from as well. Besides Ebay, some sites let people sell things. Like on Amazon, it will list the seller if it isn't them. I know sometimes listings like that can be priced absurdly because people believe they can make that money.
Now, if the listings are specifically from Amazon or another retailer, I have no clue why they would be asking for money in the hundreds of dollars range.
"I don't want the pretty lights to come and get me."-Homecoming 2005
"You can't pray away the gay."-Callie Torres on Grey's Anatomy.
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BJR said: "Why would Finishing the Hat be out of print? That seem shocking to me, considering it's only 10 years old and by such a prominent person. Expensive to print, perhaps?"
That's a good question. I'm guessing it is expensive, but collections of lyrics don't often stay in print. Even acknowledging this is Sondheim, a collection of his complete lyrics is only attractive to a pretty niche audience.
Oscar Hammerstein II--as culturally important in his day and infinitely more popular--published a collection of his lyrics and it went out of print for 50 years, then came into print for a very short time again with a new intro by Sondheim.
Right now, there is a series reprinting the complete lyrics of famous Broadway lyricists, but they don't contain all the autobiographical info Sondheim does, so they are probably cheaper to print: only one volume per person.
I had no idea it was so hard to get hold of nowadays. And if it's really out of print and not just out of stock, that's surprising. It's not like it was made by a small publisher. It's Penguin Random House.
A large book on high quality paper would be expensive to print in a small print run, so maybe that's it. If the publisher gets enough requests for it, maybe they'll consider reprinting.