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Occasionally when I am out thrifting, I come across people with barcode scanners attached to their phones. They speed through the books shelves. They grab a book and scan the UPC bar. If the phone makes a “ding” the book goes in their cart. No “ding” it goes back on the shelf.
Books with UPC bars are too competitive a market for my tastes, but this past weekend I ended up with nine bags of books and wonder if there is an easy way to get through them all.
Does anyone know what this service is an how much it costs? Do these people then list the books somewhere or do they trade them into a central location?
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Here’s a list of book scanning apps:
Live Scanning Android And IPhone Book Scanner Apps:
Amazon App (iOS | Android)
Profit Bandit (iOS | Android)
FBA Scan (iOS | Android)
Scan Power Mobile (iOS | Android)
Seller Mobile (iOS | Android)
Scoutify (iOS | Android)
Amazon Seller (iOS | Android)
Cash 4 Books (iOS | Android)
Book Scan and Sell Textbooks (iOS | Android)
Barcode Scanner for Amazon (iOS | Android)
Book Scouter (iOS | Android)I know a few people who use Scoutify and Book Scouter.
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I do a couple of shifts as a volunteer in a thrift shop, sorting and pricing books. Today’s pile was about 20 sacks of books, each weighing about 50 pounds.I can use a barcode scanner, connected to a computer, inputting to Amazon and Abe, but I only do that for a few books.
The books I dump include hardback fiction, trade paperback fiction, autobiographies by nonentities, some diet books, out-of-date cookery books unless they involve Jello and Spam, technical books in which the field has progressed significantly since the book was published (e.g. computing) and Guinness Book of Records/Ripley’s/annuals of any sort.
Scanning can give a rough idea of desirability- most books turn out to be between 1 penny (or cent) to a couple of quid (or dollars). It being a shop, the stuff gets priced at 1.99, 2.99 or 3.99. I try not to put the sticker over the barcode 🙂
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Do you scavenge while volunteering by getting access to the items first?
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If I want something I have to get someone else to price it, and then the purchase gets logged next to my name. Last thing I bought was a wooden box that had been languishing in the storeroom for a couple of years. The pricing got delegated to the assistant manager- took him a couple of weeks to come up with a price of £25 (had a name plaque on it). There’s actually very little staff purchasing- I kind of have a feeling of fairness towards any resellers or collectors that’d come in the shop and I suspect the others do. I’m at the receiving end on a Saturday, when I go to a flea market in Nottingham, and the vendor starts telling me “That shouldn’t be there -[so-and-so] should have picked it out”. Well, sack ’em and employ me instead:)
The mental and physical benefits are good. I get a constant reminder of what a death pile looks like, and I have to physically move half a ton of books to make room for me to work! The drawback is that the sales process is clogged. The manager’s aware that I sell stuff online, and they have accounts to do so, but there’s no room or time in the shop to make a go of it. Hence there’s probably a couple of hundred old books up on the shelves just sitting there. And shelves of board games and pottery that should really be taken to a car boot sale.
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I feel that I’d have a difficult time sorting at a Thrift shop since I’d want to be picking for myself Are you allowed to come back to the store in your off hours to buy like a normal person?
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Yes, but the stock’s a bit pricy! And (apart from the books) mediocre. Good line in secondhand wedding dresses though (apparently). Room upstairs with about 50 dresses, donated by a Mr. Bluebeard.
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Back in the day, like 2004ish, I used to use Scoutpal and sold on amazon, i see they are still around. My main sources for nice books were always the Friends of the Library stores often in a basement at public libraries. The big thing with these was to travel a bit and hit the more expensive areas libraries. Pretty much everything was a buck or two at the most. Another GREAT resource can be university press shops. I remember one time when I lived near Yale, they had a cart outside with oddball books, brand new just a black marker streak on the top of the pages. One title was something about petrochemical engineering, pretty thin book, i figured i would take a shot for a buck, bought one, listed it walking home and it sold almost instantly for over 60 bucks. I went back and bought out the cart…
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Marks like the black marker on page edges are put on remaindered books (presumably by the distributor). I suppose someone runs a marker down the edge of a pallet of books. Sometimes there are holes or nicks in the book. Another thing is “price-clipped”- the dust jacket’s had the price removed from the front inside corner.
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