Final Book Sale of 2012

I thought I was going to do two more book sales this year but because of the schedule of other things in my life, the sale on September 23rd will be the last one of 2012. January 27th of 2013 will be the next one after this. That's my daughter Akeesa's birthday and the day before my 70th birthday. I just returned from a few days relaxing down in the Pacific Grove/Carmel area and spending some time at beautiful Pt. Lobos State Reserve. The thrift stores in that area were extraordinarily productive this time and I brought back 3 boxes of good books from this trip. I've been making progress going through the collection of 350 CD's that I bought a few months ago and will have at least 100 of them to sell this time. A lot of Jazz and blues but other stuff too and also CD's that I picked up along my trail since my last book sale in June.

Last Book Sale

I just finished returning the last load of books from my book sale on Sunday, June 24th to one of my storerooms. Took 55 boxes of books and 5 1/2 boxes of CD's to this sale. Am happy with how I did this time although it was the lowest total of this year. Sold a few of the new CD's from the collection of 350 that I just acquired, had probably 40 from this batch. I will have many more from this selection of CD's at my next sale which will probably be in August, Sunday the 26th.  There will be a lot of blues music at the next sale. In July, my wife Carlie and I will be at an Art Festival in Salem, Oregon selling our mixed metal jewels on the day of the Caspar Breakfast and so can't do the book sale. This sale just completed was made simpler because there was no event at the Caspar Community Center on the Saturday before so I was able to set up the tables and put out books the day before making it a whole lot easier to be ready Sunday morning. Unfortunately this won't be the case in August because there is an event taking up the entire building that will go into Saturday night. If I want to do my book sale I will have to get up at something like 4 in the morning in order to be ready by 9am on Sunday. I've done this before but it's not my favorite activity. If my energy level is good and I feel OK I'll do it and plan to at this point.
Am in Cotati at the moment with my grandkids and will harvest books tomorrow on my way back to the coast at thrift stores in Santa Rosa and Cloverdale. Email me if you have books or CD's that need new homes. Jima@mcn.org

It's Sunday evening after the book sale at the Caspar Community Center. You can see pictures on the right of the north room before and then at the start of the sale. Later on in the morning there were as many as 30 people at times looking at books. We did very well, this one scored a 7 1/2 on a scale of 1 to 10.

These book sales are somewhat obsessive behavior for me but I enjoy them a lot and the  money is good. I basically move 50 to 60 boxes of books 4 times before, during and after the sales. All that to create a bookstore for 5 hours.

 I enjoy this game I play with books, basically I'm looking for useful and interesting books for myself and also friends, neighbors and people who happen to come to the breakfast, many from out of town. Another part of the game is finding books that have more than expected value. It's almost always something unexpected. The books I see and think that they might be valuable usually aren't, it's usually some odd little volume out of left field that surprises me with what it's worth.



 

Two examples: recently I found a very sweet little book about butterflies, it was a Hallmark book with watercolor pictures of species of butterflies and side by side pictures of the caterpillar and the moth or butterfly that it became. Very nicely done but it was Hallmark after all. I paid 50 cents for it and supposed I would sell it for $4 or $5. As it turns out the
cheapest one on the internet (listed by major sellers) was $65. It's hard to figure why, it was published in 1998. I guess they didn't reprint it and a demand developed for it. The other was a
little hardback called 85 Ways to Tie a Neck Tie that I picked up for a dollar at a library sale. Nice looking book that I thought I would probably sell for $6. After checking it on the internet, I listed it on Amazon and it sold very fast for $55. One aspect of this game is that I have to check great numbers of books online. Assessing value is certainly incredibly easier than it used to be, before the internet when you had to acquire printed catalogs or communicate with sellers by phone or mail or in person.