What's the easiest way for my father-in-law to sell his book collection?

January 2, 2007 12:59 PM

My father-in-law's basement is filled with hundreds of old books, inherited from his parents. What's an easy way for him to sell them?

Most of them date from about 1900-1950. About half of them are novels of dubious resale value (lots of romance and children's titles), but there's also a fair amount of nonfiction - mainly history and science.

The sheer number of the books prevents him from selling them in the usual ways, such as taking them to an antiquarian bookseller or selling them individually online. Any ideas?

posted by melvix to grab bag (12 comments total)

i have taken a box of perhaps a hundred or two misc old books to a used book store and sold them all together, alternatively he could find someone who is having a garage sale and ask to throw the collection in there with .50 cents per book unless you beleive there might be some rare jewels in there
posted by BSummers at 1:03 PM on January 2, 2007

Easiest way would be to sell the whole lot to a dealer, one and all.

Old children's books can be very valuable. Don't know why you'd assume they wouldn't be.
posted by lampoil at 1:07 PM on January 2, 2007

find an antiquarian seller who will come to you -- the ones i've worked for/with liked to buy estates, assuming they were well curated. worthwhile bang/buck ratio. more than once i was assigned to drive out to somebody's house, pack up their library, and haul it back to the shop.
posted by sonofslim at 1:20 PM on January 2, 2007

sonofslim's answer is a good one, if your FIL is located in the same area you are. Some larger used bookstores will send people out to take a look. Most require that you physically bring the books to them-- and even then you will probably be disappointed by how few they take.

Old books are not necessarily valuable at all, and without the time and energy to look them up individually and sell to the online market, you are probably only going to make a negligible amount. Perhaps you could break the library up into mixed "lots" and then sell the lots online. That would require far less research, and if there's anything of value a collector would have to buy the whole lot to get it.

Once a dealer has passed through them and made an offer for the ones s/he wants, you should simply donate them to any local church, library, school, or charity. And those places may not be able to use them, but will have a greater ability to sell them off at sales, and will be grateful for the funds raised by it.
posted by hermitosis at 2:05 PM on January 2, 2007

Yes, call around to used bookstores. When I moved across the country a few years ago, I had to get rid of lots and lots (and lots) of books. A second-hand bookstore in my area was happy to send someone out; he gave me an estimate, I accepted, and they came and got the books.
posted by rtha at 2:47 PM on January 2, 2007

I used to work for a major used bookstore. When they give you an estimate, it's just based on their knowledge of what will sell in their store. The rest, I'm sorry to say, gets thrown in the dumpster. If you just want a quick and dirty way to sell the books, that's your best bet, but I'd go with someone who actually knows something about book values, like sonofslim mentioned.
posted by Liosliath at 4:07 PM on January 2, 2007

I second the notion that your fortune could be in those children's titles. Children's books from that era often have lovely color plates unlike today and kids books seem to go out of print more frequently than other titles. I have some picture books from the 60s and 70s that would be worth $200 - $400 apiece if my brother had refrained from drawing in them. And my mom has some fabulous 1930s and 40's children's books that neither of us were allowed to handle as kids...

If you need to break up the collection I'd sort it roughly by genre. But you should be able to get a reputable used bookstore to come out and give you an estimate for the collection.
posted by rosebengal at 4:15 PM on January 2, 2007

The children's books could be quite valuable - even things like original Hardy Boys & Tom Swift are now collectible.
posted by jkaczor at 4:34 PM on January 2, 2007

If possible, get two quotes from used/antiquarian book stores. This is how they do business and they'd be glad to take a look. If you can get at least two quotes you would have a better idea of what you have.
And yes, children's books are often the best sellers, especially with illustrations.
posted by readery at 5:48 PM on January 2, 2007

Depends on where you live. If you live in a big city, truck it all to a book store. If not, check Amazon to see if anything is worth the price and sell it on Amazon or eBay.
posted by jeffamaphone at 6:54 PM on January 2, 2007

As others have mentioned, separate out the children's titles and any books on architecture. Ditto for science fiction titles.

Go through the ones that are left over and check the inside first few pages to see if any are signed by the author. Put those aside to be researched.

If any of the remainder have pristine book jackets and are in excellent condition, set those aside to research them.

A hit-or-miss source of what is valuable is Abebooks. You can look up titles on there.

Now, I'm going to break it to you as gently as I know how. The books in your dad's basement? Are probably not worth as much to you as you might imagine. We purchased a house full of stuff from 90 years of the previous owners' lives and cataloged over 1500 books in here, many from the late 1800's to mid 1900's. Perhaps ten of them were worth the time and trouble to sell. (I'm talking $50+ per book.) Were they interesting? Oh God! They were fascinating. For the first three years, I was in book heaven as I'm a biblio-freak. Were they worth the time and effort to maintain, research, cultivate a clientele for and sell each one? No.

A dealer who will come to your house may or may not take all of the books. The savvy dealers will look over the collection and separate out the ones that they think they can sell. Then, they will offer you about 1/3 of the estimated value that the dealer could sell them for. And that is actually a pretty fair price. They are paying the costs of keeping the inventory, at their place of business for which they owe utilities and such, marketing their business, developing their knowledge of books, developing their clientele and the trust their clients have in them and so on. They hope that their costs for selling the book don't exceed 1/3 of the selling price. And they hope to make 1/3.

So, although sites like Abebooks will help you to identify what might be worthwhile, don't expect the prices that you see in there in exchange for your books.

This was the most depressing lesson I learned in inheriting all of these cool books. In the end, I made an effort with anything that may have had an Abebooks estimated price of 50+ and gave away or donated the rest.

Best of luck, whatever happens.
posted by jeanmari at 9:52 PM on January 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

Thanks for all your answers - this is very helpful.
posted by melvix at 7:06 AM on January 3, 2007