I LOVE my local Goodwill bookstore. It’s a treasure hunt with some great finds for my collection. I credit the Goodwill bookstore with me first reading my favourite authors Ursula K Le Guin. Most books are are $2.50 – $5.99 for paperbacks and $7.99 for hardcovers. Of course this is what attracts the resellers.
About once a week, you’ll noticed them with a scanner to check the value of books, grabbing anything that is in good condition. At most times it’s 3-4 people combing the whole store (which looks like a lot since the store is so tiny. This really annoys me when I walk in to see this and I’m not to sure of the real reason why. From the perspective of the Goodwill, they get their money, but it does feel like there’s something wrong going on.
I really don’t know…What’s your take on these practices?
by therealredding
4 Comments
I also find it frustrating, in college I would always go to goodwill first to see if any of my course books were there. (I was an English major so we read many popular works) It’s a cheap, reliable way to recycle knowledge. When resellers come into play, it eliminates the stock available for those who may genuinely need it. It’s also a lot less enjoyable to browse through the books when they have been so heavily combed through. Pretty disheartening.
Goodwill bookstore? Goodwill has bookstores??
Back in the day, pre-Amazon, I used to frequent library sales. You still saw used bookstore owners and other dealers sifting through the good stuff first. It’s worse now because online used-book sales make money. IMO, places like Goodwill should limit book purchases per customer to discourage resellers. After all, one can often buy that same book from Goodwill on Amazon or Abebooks (same thing).
These pests have absolutely TAKEN OVER our local library book sales too. It keeps readers away from those sales, and that pisses me off. The past one I went to, they were lined up early with totes and actual GARDEN wagons (Those rolling carts for potting plants etc.) so they could just raze the sale and carry everything with them. They storm through, anything that looks good just gets stacked in their carts and they sit there taking up space, scanning scanning scanning and taking the best stuff, and leaving their cast-offs in piles….not even bothering to put the books back in some sort of order. As they loaded their carts and departed, older people (most likely on a fixed income) trickled into the sale, but there was not much left that would be good and/or fun reading, mainly cookbooks, romance novels (I know SOME people are into these, but come on….not a genre everyone likes), foreign language titles and the like. These people are a pestilence, and no one can convince me otherwise.