New Gig: Weeding Books

[iris lilies]

I’m not really looking for answers rather than comments or cheerleading.


My situation: I have a collection of 750 children’s books that have pub dates from 1880 to 1998. They are, specifically, illustrated books in the fantasy genre. Most of the collection, 80%, are modern picture books. These are skinny and dont take up much space.This is my art collection, I collect these for the illustrations.

Anyway—I am finally ready to let them go.

The 80% of imprints between 1978 and 1998—I dont expect to sell this group necessarily. I wonder if there is enough of a market to donate them to one of three antiquarian/collectible booksellers near to me? Or, should I just drop them off at one of my region’s big general booksales?

The 20% that are old and more rare—I may try to get $ for these.

But also in the mix here is that I am skimming 100 volumes of the entire collection off to keep permanently. These are my favorites. These are not necessarily the very old ones, I have favorites from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s.

So I welcome comments about the collectible illustrated children’s book market and anynother comments. I stop collecting about the year 2005 so I no longer monitor what’s going on in that market, but I assume the market has plunged like with most antiques.

[Tybee]

Quick question--do you have any James Stevenson picture books? My kids loved them and I am buying them for my grandchildren now--they are very funny, from the 80;s.

[iris lilies]

Quick question--do you have any James Stevenson picture books? My kids loved them and I am buying them for my grandchildren now--they are very funny, from the 80;s.

nope!

[Tybee]

Thanks!

[KayLR]

My employer has an annual booksale fundraiser. In my experience, "antiquarian/booksellers" are the first in line every year, just short of camping out overnight. So if you dropped them off at a general book sale, they might likely end up in their hands anyway. IOW, do what is convenient.

[Teacher Terry]

My husband had 40 boxes of books that we sold at a garage sale. We had 5 professionals show up early to buy. We donated the rest.

[iris lilies]

I don't expect to get rid of them in one fell swoop. I will spend two winters sorting and boxing, so they will leave this house in dribs and drabs.

There is a very cute used bookstore in Hermann, and I need to stop in to see if she is interested in these, if she knows anything about children's books.

One of the used bookstores here in St. Louis has a section on antiquarian kids’ books and I have purchased from her before, so she is likely she most knowledgeable in this area for kids’ books. But I would like to give Hermann the business because I cant imagine there is much money being made in that operation.

[iris lilies]

Re: the Hermann bookstore

Sometimes I think half of the shops there must be owned by trust fund babies. I dont understand how any of them make money.

[NewGig]

In general, books before isbns the 10 and 13 digit ID numbers are worth more and can be collectible. Children’s books or even books encyclopedias can be worth money, if they have color illustrations, usually more than one.

in general, readers digest condensed books and National Geographic magazines from the 1960s on are not worth a lot of money.

that said? I can tell you stories about books which looked like they were worthless which weren’t.

the used book business encompasses everything from Gutenberg on, no one can know everything. And the general rules of thumb above all have exceptions.

if you have the time to look up some of the modern books, use eBay and only look at SOLD auctions. If you use Etsy, book finder, bonanza, etc.what you see is what people want to get for the books, not their real worth.

Books are ground up trees and rocks, they are only worth what someone else will pay you for them; it’s all supply and demand. A book dealer will give you anywhere from 20% to 50% of their retail price. Books usually sat on a shelf for a year in the days you could make a living at it. Standard markup when I started in the business was 100% by the time I quit it was 300% or more. That book sitt8ng on the shelf for a year or more has to pay for all the overhead it eats up when you sell it. The mark up sounds insane, until you think about that.

i closed my shop with approx 100,000 books, 14 years ago. I’m still getting rid of them, mostly for nothing. Certainly it’s nothing when you pay $150 or more a month to store them. A friend of mine sells my high end stuff and he sold 2 pieces at the Boston show, so I could pay the rent on my storage this month, but that’s not normally true.

[iris lilies]

I do check ebay sold and completed listings now and then. I check ABE and Alibris, but those dont show sold data to non-members that I can see.

A couple years ago I worked with a nearby book seller on consignment to sell a 100 year old book listed in the Baumgarten guide (old price guide before the internet took off) for $550. I grabbed it for $8 back in the early 90’s and while
i love the illustrator, I did not like the book. He was only able to get $200 ish for it, which we split.

That was my most expensive book. So, it is not worth my time to look up these things.

I was not surprised, really, to see today the Younger’s Alph- bet Books website inactive. I am sure they are getting ready to retire. They were always the highest end dealers of antiquarian children’s books. They were active a few months ago.

you have confirmed that the bookselling biz is not strong.