Friday, February 19, 2010

2010 Book Sale Report Part 1

Last night I attended a small book sale at a local private school. I am horrible at estimating how many books are in a sale, but I recall that in the past this sale advertised having somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 books. This sale used to be a yearly tradition, except that they did not have the sale last year. It returned this year.

I normally do not get that many books at this sale, nor are they anything that great. The thrill is in the hunt, and I am not going to miss going to a sale that could have something good. One year I bought Judy Bolton #34 in dust jacket at this sale for under $5.00, so that is why I keep going back.

I left this sale with about the same number of books as usual.


I bought two sets of six flashlight editions because they contained the bookmarks. I do not believe that I have that particular bookmark, so I will be keeping one of them. I consider the bookmarks to be the best items I found at this sale.

I also bought two flashlight editions that have the textured surface. I found quite a few softcover books, which will hopefully supplement books that I find tonight and will go in lots on eBay. I bought a few hardcover books which will probably be listed on Bonanzle. I bought two individual flashlight editions because they have the textured surface.

Tonight is the big library book sale. I will leave for it within the next two hours and will wait in line around six hours in order to be one of the first people in the door. I reported on this sale last year, and here are the posts:

Book Sale Report Part I
Book Sale Report Part II
Book Sale Report Part III

This year's experience will be similar. I never know how well I will do at the sale. Last year was better than the previous year, and this year could be about the same or not quite as good. What I do know is that it will be an exhausting but fun experience.

I noticed that last night's sale had fewer people than usual. I am wondering whether it is because the sale skipped one year and lost momentum. Perhaps some people forgot about in in the last two years. Could it also be because of how eBay has declined? The big library sale that I will attend tonight was a zoo back in around 2001-2003, and it was very hard to get any children's books during those years. Everyone was selling on eBay and was there for inventory. I have had better luck in the years since that time.

A book seller did grab large quantities of children's books last night—books that I did not want. I may have to contend with him tonight. Last night's sale had around 50 to 75 flashlight edition Nancy Drew books that I did not purchase. Those books lasted on the shelf only a few minutes past when I took the ones I wanted. People do consider the flashlight edition books to be desirable.

Last night's sale had no matte Nancy Drew picture cover books. The fact that the matte books have been out of print for 24 years is causing them to be harder to find at sales. Last night's sale consisted of books that were donated by the students and staff of the private school. It is easy to see why the sale only had the flashlight books.

I will report on tonight's sale sometime in the next few days. I will be exhausted after spending 9 to 10 hours at the fairgrounds, so once I am rested enough, I will give my report.

2 comments:

Paula said...

Good luck on the book sale, Jennifer! I really wish we had one like that close to me!

I finally set up my booth on Bonanzle. Not many items but it's a start. Here's the link (hope it's okay for me to put it here): http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/nolamom

I also have already reported a bug in item setup and suggested a new feature. The new feature was to provide Booth search capability from the main Bonazle page. I have gone to Bonanzle before and wanted to go directly to your booth and there's no easy way to do that! Obviously, I'd like to be able to tell people, "Just type in my username (nolamom) in the booth search and it will bring up my booth." So we'll see if that like that suggestion or not.

Thanks for all your help and suggestions on setting up a booth in this blog. It really simplified things for me! I found it much easier than ebay.

They have a duplicate feature now that is great. The only thing is you have to be careful because they don't copy the item traits and if you edit the original item (with your new info) instead of the duplicated item, the other item will not have the item traits that were set up initially. I learned this the hard way! That was the bug I reported but Bonanzle support said the traits are not copied "by design". Doesn't make sense to me and I told them so, but who am I? A measly non-premiere member. ;)

Jennifer White said...

I know they had some reason not to make the traits copy to the next item, but for me, it would be better if they copied. Now that I think of it, I need to check on some items I duplicated awhile back. I forgot about how the traits don't copy.

Thanks for mentioning your booth. I added you to my favorites so that I will see whenever you add new items.