Big Book Find October 2012

Today I saw an ad for an estate sale that advertised "hundreds of books."  Estate sales almost never have series books, and when they do, the books are of minimal interest and hugely overpriced.  I had this nagging feeling that a big stash of books was waiting for me today, and that I had to go out to find it.  I get this feeling sometimes, and I have to act on it or else I will worry for the rest of the day about what I might have missed.

Gasoline costs too much these days to go out on very many random searches for books, and I did not want to go to yet another estate sale that advertised books and would have absolutely nothing of interest.  I have had very little luck lately.  But I could not shake that nagging feeling that today was a day for a big book find.  Most of the time when I have that feeling, nothing ever comes of it.  Since occasionally I am right, I just cannot ignore it.

I decided to go to the sale even though I would end up burning at least $10 in gasoline.  The estate sale did indeed have hundreds of books, but the books were all modern softcover general fiction books from the last 20 years.  As usual, that sale had books that were of no interest to me.

While I found nothing at that particular estate sale, going to it resulted in me checking a couple other locations which did result in a big book find.  My nagging feeling about a big book find was correct!  Here are photos of some of the books that I purchased.

I purchased a bunch of Hardy Boys books with dust jackets.  One or two of the higher-numbered ones could be first printings, but I have not yet checked to see.  The rest are nowhere near first printings.  Almost all of the books are tweeds.

I purchased a few Hardy Boys picture covers with the original text.  I could have purchased others with the revised text, but I find those to be about impossible to sell so I chose only the original text books.  I purchased three Trixie Belden books.

While great, the above books are not the ones that excited me.  The books seen in the next photos are the ones that thrilled me.

The Three Investigators hardcover editions are always very easy to sell, so I love finding them.  I even found some of the moderately higher-numbered ones, which pleased me greatly.  I will probably initially list the Three Investigators books on Bonanza, but I will most likely use the them to further build my sales on eBay.  I find it much harder to sell boys' series books on Bonanza since my website does not focus on boys' series series.  I have more success on eBay with boys' books.

Remember that the books are out there, and we just have to find them!