Selling a lot of very old books - worth it?

km1500

it might be worth investigating webuybooks

Green_hopeful

I checked lots on Abe Books, it’s like Amazon for old books. If they were worth less than £5 I gave them to Oxfam bookshop in Cambridge. £5 was my limit because if you have to post them it gets silly if they are not worth much. Ring oxfam before you go so you don’t turn up with more than they can cope with. They made a few hundred pounds from 8 bags for life we dropped off. 

The remaining ones are sat in our office with the appropriate value on a slip of paper in each. I have not sold them because I am being a bit lazy! I did look at signing up as a seller on Abe Books but I haven’t done that. I am a seller on Amazon but the costs are a lot. 

I also looked at selling them to our local bookshops but they were not interested. 

Misslayed

At the very least, flip through to check for anything of interest that has been used as a bookmark - my sister bought a box of tat at an auction for £2, and found a letter to (or from, can't remember) T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)! He had retired to a cottage up the road from the auction house. 

Rosa_Damascena

If I were able to part with any of my books I would donate them to a Little Book Library - there are 6 within easy walking distance. But as I'm not, I shan't.

I do know that chazzers get cross when given outdated relics. They particularly hate textbooks and encyclopaedias.

Watty1

Former bookseller here

Suggestion:  Go through each box and pull out any that have nice bindings or are by a well known author and are first editions (google how to spot a first edition) or those that have very nice illustrations.   Those are worth looking up on line    (They may look scruffy, i once paid 35p for a Graham Green Gun for Sale at a boot fair. It was in an lot of old books, sold it the next day for £175 so worth looking but the rest of the very large box was, imho "tat").

Some of the dictionary and reference books are not worth anything. Please don't give them to charity shops, some struggle to dispose of them (unless they are reference books on specific topics of interest).

Old leather bindings and old paperbacks are sometimes bought by the yard (or similar) as they look nice so you could try selling like that if you have time. (Google books by the yard and you will get some ideas on how to pop them on bay of E or similar).

GabbaGabbaHey

Green_hopeful said:

I checked lots on Abe Books, it’s like Amazon for old books.

Abe Books has been wholly owned by Amazon since 2008.

Green_hopeful

GabbaGabbaHey said:

Green_hopeful said:

I checked lots on Abe Books, it’s like Amazon for old books.

Abe Books has been wholly owned by Amazon since 2008.

Yes but it covers books that are not frequently sold on Amazon 

RFW

Theatres will sometimes need them as props. TV and film companies too.
There's a company in the US that sells on books they can't resell, they sell them by the metre/yard.

soolin

RFW said:

Theatres will sometimes need them as props. TV and film companies too.
There's a company in the US that sells on books they can't resell, they sell them by the metre/yard.

I used to go to a London based auction house , sadly no longer running, and they always had loads of books sold by the shelf. I suspect that was the same principle as selling by the yard. They had bookshelves all round the show room, each shelf had a number and you bid on the shelf. Half the time the books were just laid on the shelves to get more in rather than shelved correctly, and they sold mainly at less than £5 a shelf, with an occasional shelf surprising everyone by going for a lot more. As it was London you often got newbies or collectors misunderstanding how it worked, wanting just one book and expecting to leave the rest of them- and getting very cross when auction house said they took the lot or paid a further fee for disposal! The whole point was to get rid of them after house clearances.

Back when I started selling books, probably 30 odd years ago I used to buy tea truck loads, often had so many for £3 or so that I had to do three car runs due to the weight - you weren’t allowed to take the crates away as they cost more than the books inside so I had a small trolley on wheels and would unpack a load at a time and re pack into my car, it was back breaking work.  

Memory lane time now .

zackary71

I'd also occasionally buy job lots in bulk. Sell the ones that were worth something online and then stick the 'dregs' in an Auction to get rid.

One tip I'd recommend is reducing the postage cost down. Hardly anyone is going to pay £5 for a book in my view, if the postage cost on top is £5 extra. Invest in a roll of bubble wrap (£10 for 100 m x 50cm and buy plastic postal bags. (3 for £1 at Poundland). With RM Standard Postage, you should be able to post a book for £3.50 all in.