Jumbo Deluxe Metal Bookend (9") one pair

We use these for cook books mostly. They are taller than most, and substantial enough to support these large, heavy books. The wide bases add to the stability.

There's been some confusion in some of the comments about whether one order of these gives you one bookend or two - I received 2 for each order, and any other way of selling bookends (where you obviously need 2 for them to work) flies in the face of my experience. Super heavy, nicely finished, as described and perfect if you have large or heavy books to hold up.Also, like so many other things in in this world of corporate maximization of Return on Investment (ROI) the local chain stationery stores don't sell this item (which might not be their fastest seller) which used to be SOP, so goodbye chain store, hello Amazon. The sales VP Walmart rid of a while back also seemed to love his ROI over his merchandise, and once he was gone their response was not to return the missing items to the shelves, but rather to put more (junky?) items cluttering the aisles - now once again relatively uncluttered - without many of the missing items returning. Harder to say goodbye to Walmart since their main competitor - K-Mart - is run by one of the kings of ROI.

Sure you can buy some fancy, schmancy bookends that look like elephants or the head and tail of a snake - but I defy them to keeps books standing upright better than this pair. I mean they are made of steel! Like Superman. Plus they are completely ambidextrous. Put the left one on the right, the right one on the left - it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. However, they are NOT reversible. You cannot put the little long bottom part facing outward. Not a drawback for me, but some people might be used to do things differently than I do. They have something that looks, feels and smells like felt on the bottom. It actually COULD be felt - to protect whatever surface you place them on; probably even felt. One other benefit I should probably mention. If you hold them just right and slap them together sharply, they make the coolest clanging noise you've ever heard. I don't recommend doing this too often because you'll probably either bend them or chip the nice, shiny black paint - but it's certainly fun to try at least once when you pull them out of the box.Go ahead and buy them.

I read several reviews here claiming that you only get one bookend, not two. That didn't make any sense to me. Nevertheless, I went ahead and ordered two. Now I am the proud owner of two PAIRS of bookends. People, get your act together before you come here and write a review. If there was a mistake in shipping, deal with that. Don't come here and mislead everybody. This reminds me of the yahoos who break something, probably from mishandling, then come and give it one star because it's broken.Now, that's off my chest.These are great bookends that do exactly what I needed. I keep a selection of books on my desk. The desk has a polished wood surface. I had nice, heavy bookends, but whenever I pulled out a book, they would slide and the whole thing would collapse. These simple, office style bookends do the job perfectly. No sliding, no collapsing and they have a nice minimalist tech look that goes with the laptop.

Purchased these bookends after a local search in stores yielded no results. Of course, I come home, go on amazon, and there they are. Received promptly after ordering, well packaged (with other items). Upon lifting the item from the box, I could tell that these were heavy duty (by the weight). They seem like they will hold up some pretty heavy items, as they are both tall and thick. While there are some other bookends on amazon that appear to be more aesthetically pleasing (which is why I gave 4 out of 5), I can almost guarentee they won't perform as well as these heavy duty jumbo bookends. We're going for function here. I'm currently using them on an overhead shelf (above the tv) to hold up all of our Blu-Rays and DVD's (we have many...) and they function perfectly. The low price coupled with great shipping made this an easy decision. And as usual, amazon has all the hard-to-find items.

These arrived yesterday (on time) and were almost immediately put to use. This morning, I was adjusting them and one scratched the table top. Inspecting the bottom of the guilty bookend, I found an edge that was bent slightly downward. No other potentially damaging edges were found on this pair or the second pair. I was able to bend the edge back up, but the paint chipped off the edge. Fortunately, I was able to use one damaged bookend where it could not damage the surface. Unfortunately, I was not able to repair the thin scratch on my table, a family hand-me-down.Hindsight is 20-20 and I wish I had checked these before using them. I hope my review will help others from having the similar damage to furniture.

The pros of these bookends are they are nice and heavy and can hold my heavy cookbooks, if I had a quibble it would be that the paint is already chipping off at the bottom upon opening the package. For my usage this isn't a problem, but it does make the quality seem a bit questionable. Three out of the four (I bought two pair) were already chipping. If worse comes to worse I'll just take all the paint off to the bare metal and use them as silverish bookends, but I shouldn't have to on a brand new product. Still, they were cheap and they are heavily constructed, so four stars.

While the photo may lead you to assume that these are dauntingly high-tech, fear not - with a little bit of know-how you too can get these babies working at optimal capacity. To get the hang of it, you may want to first just prop up a few greeting cards so that if any kind of catastrophe occurs, there is no risk of injury. Soon, though, you'll find your confidence building and you'll be wanting to put the whole World Book Encyclopedia set in there (I've just dated myself, haven't I?)!I recommend these for book owners from a skill level of beginner through intermediate. They may not have all the bells and whistles that you advanced book-propper-uppers expect from modern equipment.Good luck.