Back in the land of.... SECOND HAND STORES

Although they´re responsible for at least 20% of the crap filling up my closet right now, I´m back in the land of Goodwill, Salvation Army, Plato´s closet, and Half-Price Books on every other corner.

Love it.

$15/bag at Plato´s closet with my sister. $7.50 each for 26 different items of new or ¨gently used¨ name brand clothes. Threw a few in the re-donate bag right away because they didn´t fit, but still a bargain!

Donated 5 bags of stuff this week. The overalls, which fit unfortunately well, I had around ¨just in case¨ had to go. The Kenny G and showtunes CDs that I got on clearance at Half-Price Books 5 years ago for $2 or $3 a piece are next. Might be better to bring them straight to Goodwill instead of trying to get 50 cents a piece from them selling them back to Half-Price.... Both for my own sense of pride (wayyyy too much Amy Grant and Kenny) and to avoid the temptation of buying SO MUCH MORE CHEAP STUFF.







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What I´ve learned about Half-Price Books today
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¨I worked at Half-Price Books for a year. HPB only hires full-time employees, and one reason I think is that by spending 40 hours a week in the store, employees get a good idea of what sells and what doesn't, and for how much. After a few weeks of training, I got pretty of good at just eyeballing a batch of books and breaking it down: "This will sell for $5, this will go for $7, these paperbacks will go for $1 each" and so on. Of course we could only offer sellers a fraction of what we sold them for, so we would only offer $1 for the $5 book, maybe $1.50 for the $7 book and $1 for 8 paperbacks. Also, there was a lot (a lot) that we didn't sell and either donated, recycled, or threw away. I saw enough Stephen King paperbacks to last a lifetime, so a dog-eared Cujo from the 1980's would not go on the shelf, it would get tossed.

Or in other words, what Jessamyn said.
posted by Kronoss at 7:17 AM on April 26, 2007¨


They then take the bulk of your books to the dumpster

Which is the reason that HPB is a great place to dumpster dive.
posted by richrad at 8:14 AM on April 26, 2007

http://ask.metafilter.com/61370/How-does-Half-Price-Books-determine-the-trade-in-value-of-bookscdsdvds