Book Sale Gold by Stacy

Stillwater Public Library Book Sale will run April 19-22.  20,000 items priced .25 to $1.00.

We hear the stories all the time about people finding treasures at a library booksale.  When I say “treasures,” I don’t mean sentimentally invaluable items like my mint copy of “Spotlight on Scott Baio” which I will savor forever.  No—I’m talking about items actually worth lots and lots of money.  Do any of these types of treasures pop up at our library booksale?  With the Spring Used Book Sale coming up April 19-22, I decided to find out.

Asking around, I found one person who was lucky enough to snap up a first edition copy of “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote.  I also found someone who found three early edition Hardy Boy books with original dust jackets which were then sold for several hundred dollars by a collector.  The really big find, though, was when someone here found a true, self-published, first edition of “A Time to Kill” by John Grisham that later sold for several thousand dollars!

I also actually had an experience with finding a treasure too.  It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was able to leisurely stroll through the sale handling book after book after book.  There happened to be a fairly decrepit copy of a Nancy Drew still on the table (not decrepit in the valuable way, just the falling apart way).  Being an avid Drewist my whole life, I decided to add it to my purchase pile.  When I got home and leafed through my books, I found a folded up set of Nancy Drew Fan Club papers from around the 50s or early 60s, with a club membership card and everything.  It was an exciting find and another Drewist offered me a little something in the high double digits for the items (my eyebrows are wagging as I say “high double digits”).  But these items are sentimentally valuable to me, so I decided to hang on to them.

Having found a treasure of my own and hearing these stories from others keeps me going back for more.  If you want to treasure hunt at the library book sale, please come on by!  And if you need more info on spotting valuable books, checkout “Collecting Books: Instant Expert” by Matthew Budman or Marie Tedford’s “Official Price Guide to Collecting Books.”  Get info on book sale hours and prices at http://library.stillwater.org/sale.htm.

Stillwater, OK.