Used Book Store Finds
 

Was in West Lafayette, IN this weekend and was wasting time at store with a pretty sizable basement full of used books. Picked up these two books for less than 20 bucks total. Baseball Americana - Treasures From The Library of Congress from 2009 and Baseball: An Illustrated History by Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward from 1994. The books are like new and the latter was a gift from Serge to his Dad on Christmas in 1994 based on the inscription. Enjoyed flipping through the pages on the flight back. Have y’all found any gems at a used book store?

Depends on how you define it. I was an afficionado of the history of the West and I found some very tough first-person accounts type of books about Tombstone and the Hole In The Wall Gang at a used book store in San Francisco in the cheap books bins. Long out of print and very interesting reads.

Used book stores are full of gems. I hit every one I can, as often as I can. I have made a private library of thousands of volumes mostly acquired from them over my life. For even just a buck or two in the clearance bins you can find some wonderful stuff and knowledge. Impossible to beat a good book for value. The real challenge is not spending ten hours there picking through absolutely everything

Library sales are also great places to find obscure little gems - I had a number of books on Asian history and philosophy from local libraries that had sales back in the mid-late 90's in Memphis.

The best thing I ever found in book store was copy of the Bucky Harris Story autographed by everybody on the team, including Walter Johnson, for $3.50. Unfortunately, I was only 16 at the time, and Goodwin Goldfadden soon talked me out of it.

Cool book, thanks for sharing.

I remember winning an REA auction of some D304s that were in spectacular condition. They were found in a book. It was about 32k for 4 of them, again, if I remember correctly. That was quite a bit at the time.

I have gotten cards, several times over the years, from bookstore owners who found them in books.

I think 1 of those cards in the book may be one I used to own too, unless it's the other one known!
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Yes, I'm an engineer that works on water projects and I have a small library of historical books on water systems in the west that I've picked up over the years. This is the first time I actively looked for anything related to the hobby though. It's definitely something I'll be doing next time I'm in a used book store though.

Incredible! That book was titled "Playing the Game" by Harris and is nearly impossible to find with a dust jacket in decent shape. How much did he give you for it?

Yup, best things I've ever found were at Library Sales, before the used books sellers could find them.

Once found a full year bound volume of a Civil War era Police Gazette (edit: faulty memory, it was "Harpers Weekly Illustrated") for like a 100 bucks or so.

It was at a fairly big library, 1st night of large weekend sale known to all the local book and antique dealers. They had it set aside in a special "Antiquities" section of higher end books. I honestly couldn't understand how one of the book dealers there didn't grab it before I did, as I was hardly the first one there. :confused:

I traded it for baseball cards, and Goodwin didn't put a very high a value on them, so I probably did OK.

Aniquarian
 

I found this one at an Antiquarian Book Fair quite a few years ago and got it graded shortly thereafter. At the time, SGC was the only TPG that could grade oversized cards.