Comments on Bookride: Library Sales

The book sale in Singapore this year is in July:)

2010-06-17T02:53:19.622Z

The book sale in Singapore this year is in July:)

Thersites is right! Though many places here overco...

2009-10-12T15:53:04.142Z

Thersites is right! Though many places here overcompensate with freezing air-conditioning :p Still, dress lightly. Light colours are good. You MUST also check out Bras Basah Complex while you're here for lots of 2nd hand books! Leon

Thanks Lew - I vaguely knew about booksalefinder b...

2009-10-10T11:36:55.774Z

Thanks Lew - I vaguely knew about booksalefinder but have checked it (Bay Area where I am going soon) out and it is full of useful sales. All the best. Nigel

Good Morning Nigel, I have found the following A...

2009-10-06T11:58:30.802Z

Good Morning Nigel,
I have found the following American booksale site most useful.
www.booksalefinder.com
Best Regards,
Lew Jaffe

hi from a former california library sale goer! I ...

2009-10-04T18:57:32.905Z

hi from a former california library sale goer! I have done Palo Alto twice and last week did the biggest in San Francisco. These sales are a waste of time compared to other sources. The donators and organizers are hip to the resale value of books and you are unlikely to find things that haven't been checked and re-checked. To keep people coming, they will leave crumbs worth up to a certain amount (say $20) but the margins are poor when they are pricing up to $5 a book and you factor in the time it takes to sort through junk. The big sales are best suited for hobbyists and sellers with scanners who want to churn large amounts at low profits- or sellers who think they might get lucky from "mistakes". Rule of thumb, when it's well publicised around here it's not worth going. There are other ways to do well, you just have to be crafty.

Not in the same class for rarities, perhaps, but A...

2009-10-04T17:16:17.649Z

Not in the same class for rarities, perhaps, but Amnesty International regularly have £1 books ales (going down to 50p towards the end) ar Conway Hall in London. They attract quite a few dealers as well as members of the public.

Singapore is hot any time, Nigel. It has two seasons: hot and wet and hotter and wetter.

Not in the same class for rarities, perhaps, but A...

2009-10-04T17:14:33.168Z

Thanks Readymade---From what I hear about Aussie b...

2009-10-04T16:41:51.095Z

Thanks Readymade---From what I hear about Aussie book sales I should get down there and Singapore is a good stop off point although I bet it's very hot in August. Nigel

Your blog is always interesting reading :) So will...

2009-10-04T14:18:26.247Z

Your blog is always interesting reading :) So will you be coming to Singapore? :D

Not so 'Poor Miss Finch' --it's great to hear that...

2009-10-04T00:16:13.962Z

Not so 'Poor Miss Finch' --it's great to hear that a three decker doesn't get grabbed in nanoseconds--what a find! Thanks for your notes from the front line and good hunting in future...Nigel

Just a quick comment to say how much I enjoy your ...

2009-10-04T00:03:33.991Z

Just a quick comment to say how much I enjoy your blog and how true your comments are on library sales. A similar phenomenon in Australia are the charity bookfairs, and the best ones are the Lifeline bookfairs. Here in Canberra Lifeline holds two fairs every year, in Autumn and Spring. I've been living in Canberra for 15 years and I haven't missed one yet. Over the years I've picked up some nice things - as you say, usually in the form of vintage paperbacks and older books, which they're a bit sniffy about. Gates open at 10am but I'm usually there just after 8am after dropping the kids off at school. Already, by that time, there are 100 people ahead of me, mostly dealers from Canberra and New South Wales. Apart from the main hall, in which about 150,000 books are sold on trellis tables, they have a rare book room, which opens at 12 midday. In recent years Lifeline has released a catalogue of the rare books - here is a link to the catalogue of the Spring Fair: http://www.act.lifeline.org.au/rarebooks.htm My eye fell on Wilkie Collins' Poor Miss Finch - not one of his better novels, but still the Bentley triple-decker 1st, 1872 - and the price was $30. Ray Russell prices it as 750 quid in his guide, and Richard Dalby in the B&MC said 800-1000 quid back in 2005. So, I lined up for the usual two hours, looked around the main hall for an hour (nothing really good - back in February someone had donated their science fiction collection, built up over 50 years, so I landed a couple of hundred 1950s and '60s paperbacks), and then joined the queue for the rare book room. Already there were 20 people in front of me and I thought I was stuffed. Fortunately, they had other books on their minds - the children's books and the Australiana. I made a bee-line for the lit section, and after some frantic searching found Poor Miss Finch. That was me for the day and happily retreated home to look at my pickings. But there is a postscript - when I got home I opened opened up the title page. At the top was the signature, "Wilkie Collins February 1872". A Google search revealed that this was Collins' own copy of the novel, sold at an auction of his library in 1890. Not a bad purchase for $30.

James