Unleash Your Latent Bibliomania at the Library Book Sale

Anyone who has watched Antiques Roadshow on PBS, or caught History Channel’s Pawn Stars or American Pickers, knows the inherent rush that can be had from digging through a pile of stuff to find something of value.

Hands down, the best place in Seattle to experience that treasure finding rush is at the twice-yearly Friends of Seattle Public Library Book Sale. And the spring edition of the sale is coming up this weekend.

The sale is open to the public on Saturday, April 16, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, April 17, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Magnuson Park in the big hangar known as Building #30. Magnuson Park is located at 7400 Sand Point Way NE, in Seattle. You can get there by bus on Metro routes 30, 74 and 75.

(There is a special members preview and rare book auction on Friday, April 15, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. I dropped by this morning and there is already a line.)

The Library Book Sale was originally set up a few decades ago as a venue where SPL could sell books that it was withdrawing from circulation due to condition, declining popularity or the purchase of newer, better copies.

It was also started as a way to generate income for the library by selling all the books and other items that are donated or simply left at libraries or in library collection boxes. Generally, few people want to throw books in the trash; they just want to find a good home for them. (If you can help it, don’t put your unwanted books in those collection boxes that you see in grocery store parking lots. The owners of those boxes cherry pick the valuable books, sell the best books, make a few donations to non-profits and grind up the rest. Yipes! Give them to a library if you can.)

Well, one person’s cast offs are another’s treasure.

Traveling through the book sale is entertaining in so many ways it almost isn’t fair. Be sure to give yourself a few hours. The books fill the entire hangar bay, a few large back rooms and, new this year, a whole other building next door.

Items for sale include art prints and posters, nonfiction books organized by category, a massive selection of hardcover and paperback fiction (including mysteries), audio books, CDs, and movies on DVD and VHS, and a nice selection of better and rare books and sets.

So, what should you be looking for? Besides a great selection of great reads at low prices (most books are $1.00 with some of the better books priced with an eye to move), there are a few items that an enterprising person can flip for cash, providing that the proper research is done.

The prints area can sometimes be a place to pick up a great piece of decorative art. I’ve seen everything from old European prints, to great old wildlife prints and original, signed art of all kinds.

Bring along a magnifying glass with a power of at least 10. Before you buy a print, look closely at it. If you see little dots, it’s a reproduction done by a photomechanical process. It might still be a nice image worth a buck or two, but lithographs and etchings are worth more. For now, at book sale prices, you don’t need to tell the difference between print types, you only need to look for the dots. To familiarize yourself with what the dots look like, hold the magnifying glass up to any image in a newspaper before you head to the sale.

Be on the lookout for old posters. Old posters for plays, galleries, movies or merchandise can be valuable and you don’t really have to know a lot about them to make a little money off of them. Trust your eyes on posters: if the image is sharp and attention getting, pay your $1.00 and put it online. Movie posters, even from movies released a few years ago, draw nice prices online.

Also, grab any picture frame you can find. Framing is expensive and sometimes at the sale you can find a framed print. Even if the art is bad, the frame is worth the buy!

Look for books published before the invention of the barcode. Although a brief visit to abebooks will show that few books are completely unavailable, older books, especially those published up to the 1940s and in good condition are usually reliable for a nice resale. Keep your eyes open for books that were, at one time, made into movies. They can usually find a good home. To find out if a title was made into a movie, bring a 3G phone and head to IMDb.

But don’t just think of reselling for content. Old books look good on shelves, particularly ones in bright colors or with an old dust jacket. Designers are often looking for a great row of pretty books with interesting, little known titles. Get a nice mix of colors, take some photos and put them online.

Once cherished writers who have few books in print are worth a purchase. Earl Stanley Gardner and Ross MacDonald were two wildly popular writers, and damn good ones, but many of their works are out of print. Paperbacks of some of their works can often be flipped for a little cash.

And be sure to head across the way to a building known as the Brig, where all the audio books, DVDs and VHS tapes are found. If you want a DVD for cheap, go ahead and look, but if you are trying to find resale material, head right to the VHS section and the audio books. Most of the items here are old library materials, which in this case is great.

Back in the day, movie studios were hitting the vaults hard for every film they could find so they could put it on tape. Libraries bought them, sometimes just one or two copies. By the time DVDs came out, the studios had stopped raiding the archives for titles. So there are a bunch of VHS titles that have not made it to DVD or an online venue, and probably never will. These titles are very collectible.

Same goes with audio books. Few audiotape titles made it to compact disc, and even CDs of books five to ten years old are out of print. So you can often find a great actor reading a great book that is not available to the general market. Cha-ching!

Even if you are not a buyer, head to the sale for some awesome people watching. The FOSPL Book Sale is well known around the country and people come from all over to buy and hold or buy and later resell books. You can watch hundreds of people with little barcode readers and software programs scanning every book to find the ones that are rare or on a buyers list. These people can get pushy and rude, but it’s a business to them and they haul out wagon-loads of books.

Sunday is half-price day and, if you want to get a look at all the books before the pickers get through them, buy a membership. It’s $15 by tomorrow or $30 at the door. That will get you into the Friday preview show.

So go ahead and unleash your inner hoarder or bibliomania. It’s fun and affordable.