Selling at 2nd and Charles

As a reminder 2nd & Charles is a new bookstore where you can sell your old/read books, movies and records.  I went shopping there soon after they opened and found some good deals.  You can read the blog post about that experience here.

Originally, I  only shopped.  This time I went back to sell some books and see how that whole process worked.  Here are the books I went in to sell.

So the way it works is you take your books to the counter, they take your license and open an account and give you a claim number.  When I turned my books in the guy said it should be about an hour.  I was shocked by this because there was only me and two other customers in the whole store.  I thought oh my goodness are they going to read each book before they give me a buy back price.  I am convinced this is part of their business model and that they give  you this long lead time so you can shop and buy more stuff.  Well I was focused.  This was a sell only trip.  I was not buying.  After about 35 minutes I got a text that my quote was ready.

Now I want you to brace yourself.

Look back at the books that I took in.

There are nine in total.

They told me they couldn't accept 3 of the books because they already had too much inventory of those particular ones.  

Ok, so now we are down to 6 books.

Go ahead and formulate a price in your head......what do you think my quote was?

Well let me tell you....

Ready?

Are you sure?

Ok, they offered me a whole $7.00.  Yep seven bucks.  Now mind you that is $7 if I take my buy back in store credit.  If I take my buy back in cash, I only get $3.50.  And yes, they relayed all this to me with a total straight face.

Now I do yard sales.  I have them and I go to them.  And I am well aware that books at yard sales go for about 50 cents or a dollar which is not far off from this offer.  I guess the unsettling part is that I don't feel the yard sale people are going to mark them up and put them on a shelf and re-sell them to someone else for 4 or  5 times the price.

I love a good consignment store.  I support re-sell stores.  Honestly, I have always sold my clothes at these stores but never bought anything from them, because it seems like they give me good prices for my clothes but they sell them at too high of prices.

I am having the exact opposite reaction with this store.  I think I may shop here but not sure I will sell here.  I would rather pass the books onto someone who will enjoy reading them I guess.

Anyway, that is my personal experience.  I do plan on shopping here.  I think the prices are decent. And occasionally I may sell books to them but I don't think it is going to be my go to.....and I was really hoping it could be.

Have you tried them? If anyone has had a different experience, I would love to hear about it.

Make it a great week.  Talk to you on Wednesday.