Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Buying Books

I've talked about how much my son likes to read on here pretty frequently.  I've even started listing some of the books that he likes, in hopes of helping other parents find books that their children might like.

It seems like we are constantly adding to our home library.  Elliott checks out 2 books at a time from his school library, 1-2 times each week.  Otherwise most of the books we read are books that we have at home.  We don't have a library in town, and we just don't make it onto base during library hours very often.  We live far enough away from base that driving there just for a trip to the library isn't worth the time or money ($6-7 in gas to get there and back).

So to add new books to our rotation, we order books from scholastic book orders from school or look for them used.  During the summer, we can usually find a few at yard sales.  We don't make it to enough yard sales to make that one of the places that we buy lots of books, though. 

We also like to look for used books when we are shopping at a thrift store.  Once again, though, we just don't make it there often enough.   There are some we like in Minot, but it's 45 minutes away, so definitely not worth a trip just to go to thrift stores.  We've been trying to go more lately when we are already in Minot, though.  For instance on Monday after my doctor's appointment we stopped in at our favorite one and Elliott found 8 books he wanted for $.50 each, and I even found 1 I wanted for only $1!
Elliott's finds at the thrift store this week.

We've also bought books online from a few different places, but have decided that it's hard to beat the prices on Ebay.  If we can find a lot of books that I know Elliott will like, I can often get them for under $1 each, including shipping!  While I was stuck in my recliner recovering from gallbaldder surgery, I ended up doing a lot (too much) of shopping on Ebay and stocked up on some great titles for Elliott for his summer reading plans.  The most I paid per book was $1.27 including shipping.  I even scored some chapter books for him in a big lot for under $.50 each with free shipping!

Our most expensive recent Ebay finds.  Several of these look like they've never even been opened and we paid less than $11.50 for all nine!




3 comments:

Theresa Mahoney said...

My 9 year old has a book buying obsession. I HATE buying them new, but will indulge her when she wants one from her class Scholastic order form. We usually stock up at yard sales and thrift stores and have scored many good bargains there. One yard sale only wanted 10¢ per book! We left win TONS!

mail4rosey said...

I've never thought to order a book from eBay, what a good idea! I have ordered text books from half.com, and I think they are affiliated?

Glad you got a nice score on your latest books!

Carla said...

You can find some great deals on books for all ages on Ebay. There are some series that are nearly full price on Ebay, but there are also a lot that are super cheap, especially older series, or books that have been reprinted several times.

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