The meeting bookstore normally carries about 25 books, and Buffett said he thought about 2,400 copies of Poor Charlie's Almanack (fourth edition) were sold the day before.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.
What would count as true or false
The claim is hedged ('about', 'I think'). True: Berkshire or reliable reports of the 2024 annual meeting show the bookstore normally offers roughly 25 titles (about 20–30), and roughly 2,400 copies (about 2,000–2,800) of Poor Charlie's Almanack were sold on Saturday, 4 May 2024. Mostly true: both are broadly right, but one figure is moderately off (for example, the title count is 15–35 or sales are 1,700–3,200). Mixed: one figure holds and the other is clearly wrong. Mostly false: both figures are off by a wide margin, but there was a large-selling bookstore offering. False: the evidence contradicts both figures.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (5)
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E1 2024ar.pdf Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Own record
“Last year we featured Poor Charlie’s Almanack and sold out – 5,000 copies disappeared before the close of business on Saturday.”
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E2 Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 2024 Annual Report Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Own record
“Last year we featured Poor Charlie’s Almanack and sold out – 5,000 copies disappeared before the close of business on Saturday.”
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E3 2024Annual Meeting Berkshire Letters (third-party transcript site) · 6 May 2024 Own record
“we have only one book at the bookstore at the Bookworm this year. Normally we have about 25.”
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E4 2024Annual Meeting Berkshire Letters (third-party transcript site) · 6 May 2024 Own record
“But we have Poor Charlie’s Almanack, fourth edition. And I think we sold about 24 hundred of them yesterday.”
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E5 The latest 2024 Buffett shareholder meeting transcript, 40,000 words full text Coinlive (crypto news site, compiled from Chinese finance outlets) · 5 May 2024
“Buffett said that Charlie Munger's book "Poor Charlie's Almanack" sold about 2,400 copies on Friday. The book is the only book sold at the annual shareholders' meeting this year to commemorate Munger's death. Buffett said that in previous years' shareholders' meetings, about 25 books were sold.”
Reasoning
E3, E4 and E5 are transcripts or reports of Buffett's own remarks at the meeting: the bookstore "normally" carries about 25 titles, and about 2,400 copies sold "yesterday". They repeat the claim and do not check it. Berkshire's 2024 annual report (E1/E2) says 5,000 copies of Poor Charlie's Almanack sold out by the close of business on Saturday. That is a running total across the shopping days, so it neither confirms nor contradicts the single-day figure of about 2,400. No source independently shows how many titles the bookstore normally carries, so neither figure can be settled under the criteria.
Cite this claim
Warren Buffett, “The meeting bookstore normally carries about 25 books, and Buffett said he thought about 2,400 copies of Poor Charlie's Almanack (fourth edition) were sold the day before.” (said 5 May 2024). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_0f3eacfe220e, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_0f3eacfe220e
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Warren Buffett
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“She and her CNBC crew do a great job of both transmitting our meetings worldwide and archiving much Berkshire-related material.”
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Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.