At the government-run Book Shop of Spiritual Legacy in the centre of Ashkhabad, the coffee-table books about Turkmenistan, featuring the late president Saparmurat Niyazov, smiling and wearing a tracksuit on the cover, go for US$3 - while copies of the Ruhnama, the 'holy' book he wrote and made required reading at all levels of education, are US$2.
But the hottest selling items are photos of the new president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, at a relatively steep US$1.25. 'They're very popular,' the proprietor said.
Under Niyazov, Turkmenistan was known as the home of the weirdest cult of personality this side of North Korea. Niyazov renamed himself 'Turkmenbashi' - or Father of the Turkmen - and then gave the same name to the month of January, the country's main port city and its tallest peak. Statues of him, usually in gold, sprang up across the capital, Ashkhabad.
When Niyazov died in December, many wondered how his legacy would be treated. The United States, Europe, Russia and China, eyeing the country's large natural gas reserves, were watching keenly for signs of change. The difficulty of doing business with the eccentric Niyazov had left the gas deposits largely untapped.
That may change under Mr Berdymukhammedov, who visited China this week and sealed huge deals to sell 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas to China National Petroleum Corp over the next 30 years. But an eerie familiarity is also emerging under the new president.
Mr Berdymukhammedov, 50, is a former dentist and minister of health who was little known even in Turkmenistan until early this year when he was thrust, via Soviet-style internal manoeuvring, into inheriting Niyazov's mantle.