Resale Queen - The Wonderful World of Books for Profit

The Wonderful World of Books for Profit

Added on 11/17/06 by Betsy 0 comments

Hi Betsy...I really enjoy reading your blog and am learning alot from you. I've recently started to go to garage sales to purchase items for resale. I was wondering if you could give any advice on the top things to look for. Are there items that seem to always be at a garage sale that the owner doesn't realize it's resale value that I should particularly look out for? Any other tips you'd like to offer? Thanks!
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>Melanie

Well Mel, one of the easiest things find at garage sales and flip for profit on Ebay are children's books.

If you go to google and do a search you can get a list of Caldecott winners, these books are very popular and sell well on Ebay.

Seuss books are another easy sell. Put them together in a lot of 25 and sell them for $35 buy it now.

Other authors worth some money: Eric Carle, Stephen Cosgrove, Sandra Boynton- basically any well known children's book author that someone would search for.

Some people sell mixed lots, meaning they just dump a whole bunch of kids books in a lot and sell it. I don't think this is very effective.

In my experience I have had the best luck with selling lots of the same series or author. You can also group them by interest or gender. My sister has had some luck selling board books grouped into boys and girls lots.

When you are shopping for books look for clean minty condition from a nonsmoking home.

Inscriptions are unavoidable, but noone seems to mind as long as they are written by an adult. Stay away from books that the previous owner took a crayon to or nibbled on. Also check for torn or missing pages.

I pay up to $.50 cents for a Seuss or a hardcover Caldecott.

If you go to a garage sale and see Berenstain Bears or Clifford or other popular, current character books for 10 cents- go for it!

Resale shops are also a good resource for books, children's books are almost always way cheaper than adult books and they usually don't charge more for hardcover which seems to be common practice in the adult books.

One resale shop I go to only charges $.20 cents for kids books, at that price I am still doing well selling 20 books for $19.99.

I thought the same would be true of adult books, but I have tried a number of times to sell them and not had much luck.

Don't forget to put in your listing that you can ship media mail, it's a slow method through USPS just for books or audio material and it is very cheap.

Also explore international shipping options like M-Bag through USPS, similar to media mail. Open your auction up to as many buyers as possible to get as many bids as possible.