My mom has some books from the late 1800s that, before I recycle them, I want to confirm that they have very little or no retail value. Anyone know of a site where I can get them appraised, or at least see if I should bother appraising them? The sites I found were $50/book or more.
Thanks to everyone who responded! I've contacted the Sugar Grove library and next time I'm out that way, I'll be dropping the books off to donate. They have a guy there that will let me know if they have any value. If not, I'll just donate them. I couldn't find anything useful online about the books, and they're not in very good condition (so says my mom), so they're probably not valuable, but we'll see. Once I find out for sure, I'll update my post. Thanks again!
The best site to use to price books of that age is: http://www.abebooks.com/
The condition of the books will make a tremendous impact on the pricing.
I used to work at a used bookstore and we did these appraisals for free. Unless it's an extremely rare or unusual book, no one should charge fees like that. For the average book from that era, it takes maybe 5 minutes to appraise.
You can do a bit of the sleuthing yourself. Open the book to the copyright page. Check the year. Then check to see if it says First Printing below that on the page. If it says Second, Third, Fourth, etc, chances are it's not that rare.
If it's new enough to have a number sequence on the copyright page, see what the number is. If it starts with 1, you might have a first. If it starts with 2, 3, 4, etc...then it's a later printing.
You can also go to used.addall.com. Type in all the information you can see in your book and then hit search. If you're coming up with hundreds of hits - not a rare book - unless it's a confirmed First. Even then Firsts aren't always interesting unless someone wants them.
Check the descriptions to see it matches yours exactly - including color & size of book. Compare the shape yours is in compared to theirs. Is it pristine? Are there loose pages or torn bindings? All of that affects the price of a book.
Good luck!
what kind of books? I would get the appraised. And if you decide to recycle them, consider passing them along to me! :)
Try searching half.com or ebay.
Take them to the library and have a reference librarian take a look at them. I've done that before and they're usually very helpful.
The value of any item is only what someone will pay you. You may find an item on a website for $50. but you do not know how long that item has been listed or if anyone will ever purchase it for that price. We have some books from the early 1900's and we were told that if they are not first editions and unusual it is just another book. My advice is to visit a few antique shops and ask the experts. Or look for a site right on-line that does book appraisals.
J. for a really quick look try ebay first you can do that from your computer. that will give you an at a glance. also i have found answers to just about everything by typing in ask.com in the search bar
then put in what your looking for it will give you a lot of choices. good luck
S.
Check with your local college or university library. NIU has an appraisal day each year and I think they only charge $5 to look at up to a certain amount of books. It's really a neat thing to go to also.
Yikes! $50?
I'd just type the name and author in a search engine or even e-bay and see what pops up.
If they are rare or valuable, I'm sure some one will be selling them on-line and you'll be able to get an approximate idea of their value.
At least, it'll help you narrow down which ones are worth getting appraised.
Good Luck!
Definitely take them to a used book store or library and also consider this-there are artists and book artists out there who might be interested in them even if they aren't worth alot, just because they are old. Try the Book and Paper department at Columbia College Chicago-lots of book artists there.
You can look them on on Amazon.com and get a current price, or if they're not listed, type the title and author into Google, and see what comes up. I've sold lots of old books on Amazon- It can be time consuming to list them, but it's so easy to do! My sister actually put two of her kids through college doing this! Good luck, and I hope they're rare and valuable!
