electricpete
Electrical
- May 4, 2001
- 16,774
Early in my career (before the internet), I hoarded textbooks. First my college texts, then an assortment of new and used books as I got into new areas in my work. Now I'm late in my career and don't need them as much, and have most of the info available electronically anyway. The dates in the front of the books ranges from around 1980 to 2005. I have a least 100 of them collecting dust and taking space in my garage.
I took a first pass through the books (trip down memory lane) to see which I could part with and so I packed up about 50 of those books and lugged them to a local Half Priced Books store. I was expecting HPB would offer me some $ for my books, because I had picked one of the books at random that had 1980 copyright date and found it for sale on the Half Priced Books website at about 25% of the original manufacturer's price (if they're selling it then I assumed they'd be interested in buying it). So I lugged 3 crates of textbooks into the store and put them on the counter and the clerk told me to browse around while they reviewed my books. After about 30 minutes they texted me that they had completed their review. I went to the clerk who told me quite unceremoniously that they were not at all interested in any of my precious textbooks (not even a nickel was offered). He explained the way the HPB chain works is that this particular branch only buys what they can sell in-store (even though the parent company sells on-line... he didn't know where they got the books to sell online). And Engineering text books are niche books not interesting to the vast majority of the general audience that might wander into his store.
On the other hand they certainly might (?) be interesting among a wider audience of on-line buyers searching out reference books in specific engineering areas if I could figure out an easy way to do that. I guess I could sell them and ship them one by one on ebay ... but that sounds like a lot of work (which is a 4 letter word to me!). I was hoping to just walk in and drop off my crates of books and collect the cash. Maybe there is somewhere to donate them for a reasonable tax deduction? Beats me.
I'll bet others here are (or have been) in a similar situation. Any suggestions?
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(2B)+(2B)' ?
I took a first pass through the books (trip down memory lane) to see which I could part with and so I packed up about 50 of those books and lugged them to a local Half Priced Books store. I was expecting HPB would offer me some $ for my books, because I had picked one of the books at random that had 1980 copyright date and found it for sale on the Half Priced Books website at about 25% of the original manufacturer's price (if they're selling it then I assumed they'd be interested in buying it). So I lugged 3 crates of textbooks into the store and put them on the counter and the clerk told me to browse around while they reviewed my books. After about 30 minutes they texted me that they had completed their review. I went to the clerk who told me quite unceremoniously that they were not at all interested in any of my precious textbooks (not even a nickel was offered). He explained the way the HPB chain works is that this particular branch only buys what they can sell in-store (even though the parent company sells on-line... he didn't know where they got the books to sell online). And Engineering text books are niche books not interesting to the vast majority of the general audience that might wander into his store.
On the other hand they certainly might (?) be interesting among a wider audience of on-line buyers searching out reference books in specific engineering areas if I could figure out an easy way to do that. I guess I could sell them and ship them one by one on ebay ... but that sounds like a lot of work (which is a 4 letter word to me!). I was hoping to just walk in and drop off my crates of books and collect the cash. Maybe there is somewhere to donate them for a reasonable tax deduction? Beats me.
I'll bet others here are (or have been) in a similar situation. Any suggestions?
=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?
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