Comments on: People scanning books with their PDAs, what's going on?!

Question: People scanning books with their PDAs, what's going on?!

cowmix — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:53:41 -0800

I was at a massive used booksale in Phoenix, Arizona today. I saw at least ten 20-something people with Treos and/or PocketPCs with barcode scanners scanning in tons of books.. it looked like they were doing real-time queries to some server getting book values and stuff like that. Who / what / where is going on? Is this a massive business or is this a new fad that young punks to now ... or what?

By: Justinian

Justinian — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:02:30 -0800

That's exactly what they were doing. I can't tell you the site, but a lot of people are taking a more assembly line approach to finding bargains at used book sales. Instead of searching manually through the stacks for a good find... and thus undoubtedly missing deals through lack of knowledge or simple oversight... some people scan barcodes to find the market price of a used book. If the price is above a certain threshold, they grab the book and then resell it on ebay or whatever.

By: cowmix

cowmix — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:32:05 -0800

Justinian: Does someone sell a kit (with the hardware) or something that hooks you up?

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:32:53 -0800

Anybody know anything about the nuts and bolts of how this is done? What hardware, what database, etc?

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:33:20 -0800

jinx cowmix

By: jvilter

jvilter — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:40:05 -0800

See ScoutPal.

By: cowmix

cowmix — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:47:32 -0800

jvilter: yeah.. that looks like what I am talking about.. but this company doesn't give any info on where to by the Treo / PocketPC hardware... but the people I saw today were using this or a service just like it.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:13:06 -0800

book arbitrage. crazy!

By: AJ

AJ — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:43:17 -0800

Here's a link to a page which has several links to the scanner devices. Seems like a growing business.

By: SuperNova

SuperNova — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:46:15 -0800

Damn. I was totally going to invent and market this myself... Thanks for the info though!

By: jefeweiss

jefeweiss — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 05:37:07 -0800

I have several friends that were making pretty good money doing this. The field might be more crowded these days. They were selling books on Amazon. The thing about selling books on Amazon is that if you know what will turn over you can sell books for a penny and still make a profit on the shipping and handling. Before my friends got their computer system they bought a lot of books that no one wanted, they pretty much filled up a 5 bedroom house with boxes of books. With inventory tracking they managed to bring the clutter down a bit. Of course, the real finds are the first editions.

By: gokart4xmas

gokart4xmas — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 06:39:31 -0800

Slight derail...cowmix, I'm in Phoenix. What is this massive sale? I'd love to go.

By: esperluette

esperluette — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 19:53:44 -0800

I used to do this back in 1998/1999 when the Internet was smaller (book arbitrage, not scanning, although I'm sure I have a CueCat around here somewhere). This was when I could buy nearly-new trade paperbacks at the public library sale shelf for TEN CENTS, and sell them online for four or five dollars, plus shipping.

Once I bought an early Dean Koontz paperback at a thrift store for fifteen cents and sold it (on eBay) for $150. That was my biggest score.

Now I have neither the time nor the inclination but I wish I did. It's a big rush to find something valuable in a heap of dross.

I think the gold rush days of book arbitrage are over, though. I've even seen, here in Chicago, used bookstores writing their price inside the back cover and underneath that the best ABEbooks or Alibris price they found.

By: bbrown

bbrown — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 07:21:41 -0800

gokart4xmas: you probably won't get this, but it's the VNSA Book Sale and it is spectacular.

Link