Books! (Me again, any interest in these?!)

[SamC]

Hi All 

 

Me Again!  (Brief backstory here, full detail in forum post below here https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/161822-magazines-and-books-free-to-good-homes/#comment-4345006) - Father passed away - left a small mountain's worth of magazines, books and models behind. Many of which have now been dealt with in various ways. Finally starting the last of it, the books! (Oh, and some DVD's and even VHS?!!)

I've begun archiving/indexing but last time it was a lot of effort for not much interest. As such, I've attached the spreadsheet here along with a few photos of some of the books (they may not correlate) 

Please let me know;

- If they're of interest

-If they're worth something (Absolutely no idea) and if so, what you would like and feel is a reasonable price for it

-If they're worth little to nothing

-Places I can potentially give/donate this collection instead of just sending it to landfill or recycling

 

Thank-you in advance for any assistance and I'll try and answer any questions sent here or via direct messages as soon as I can. I honestly do not have any real clue with regard to literature of the Train and Model Railway world so it is all a bit over my head! 

 

Thanks

Sam

 

Train Books & DVD's (1).xlsx

[Michael Hodgson]

Whilst I'd rather see your books go to somebody on here who might appreciate them, you have other options.  These people are dealers who might offer you money for them and will pay for collection by Hermes, and their system is a lot less hassle than trying to list them on Ebay.

https://www.webuybooks.co.uk

 

The value will only be a fraction of what was paid for them of course, and they don't necessarily want every book you might want to dispose of.  You have to key in the ISBN (or scan the barcode) and they'll quote you a price if they want the book in question - they'll decline to make an offer if they think they can't make a profit on it or only offer a pittance for example if they have too many copies already.

 

I recently had a clear out and they paid me £250 for 10 boxes of books, some of them being railway related; they made offers of 15p to a several pounds on over two thirds of the books I tried to shift - they declined the rest.  You can decline their offer on any particular books if you think it's not enough.  They also deal in CDs/DVDs but I have no experience of using that.

 

There's probably other firms doing the same sort of thing who might even pay more, but I was more interested in clearing some space than trying to make as much money as possible, but I wasn't prepared to just dump perfectly good books in the recycling. 

 

Another option I have used in the past is to donate unwanted railway books or magazines to the Bluebell Railway at Horsted Keynes or the North Norfolk at Weybourne, both lines having shops selling to help preservation.

 

 

 

[Steamport Southport]

Avoid random organisations wanting to buy books like the plague. Especially if they say they are doing it for charity. They very rarely are.

 

We use them and others such as World Of Books. You'll get about 10p a kilo. Yes, they really do pay by weight as they have no interest in the books apart from ones they can flog for extortionate amounts on their website or ones that go to auction.

 

The rest go for pulping even if they are good quality books worth money. Unfortunately we don't really have much choice as we get inundated with books, most of which are junk such as Fifty Shades Of Grey.

 

 

Hattons buy and sell used books now. Might be worth a try.

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/

 

Even eBay. I would say everything in the post is worth at least a fiver each, especially when you start factoring p&p.

 

 

Jason

[Mike Bellamy]

8 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Another option I have used in the past is to donate unwanted railway books or magazines to the Bluebell Railway at Horsted Keynes or the North Norfolk at Weybourne, both lines having shops selling to help preservation.

 

I don't know where you live but I expect that you will find that almost every preserved railway has a fund raising shop selling second hand books. I was in the shop at Wirksworth (Derbyshire) last week (Ecclesbourne Valley Line) as they had opened especially to try and move on a very large donated collection from a deceased estate - these were all American and Canadian books and so more specialised and more expensive than the usual more common books that you tend to find in almost every railway bookshop. The lady there said that many of the books would have cost up to one hundred pounds each but she was struggling to sell them for £10 each. Despite this, I see that their pre-season opening raised almost £2,500 (with me providing £12 of that !!)

 

Click Here for Link to EVRA Book Shop

 

Another option is to contact your local model railway group to see if they have a reference library for their members - we have five large bookcases full to overflowing of modelling magazines, modelling books and the more specialised railway books. The guy who looks after the library tries to avoid what he calls "The Boys Book of Biggest Fastest Trains in the World" as it's just a set of random photos, usually with incorrect captions that would be on no benefit to an enthusiast researching how many rivets to put on a scratch built tender!

 

Click Here for Link to a list of Model Railway Clubs

.

 

[puck]

Hi Sam

 

PM sent

 

Andy