Hobbies

For the past 14 years, ever since Jonah was born, Steve and I have worked seven days a week with paying gigs or unpaid house and kid work. There was no time for hobbies. I used to take art classes after work, but that all ended when I was pregnant and couldn’t be around the fumes from the oil paint.  I used to listen to music and see bands. I used to wander through museums for hours and keep track of free events in Manhattan. After kids, we spent weekends on the edge of a soccer field or driving to therapy or just plain working.

That’s easing up right now. We don’t have tons of free time, but we do have little pockets of time to do our own stuff. Since nature/vacuum, we’ve stumbled into a couple of new activities.

I’m selling shit on the Internet. Well, specifically books. I’m selling old books.

In the area of the country, we have a surplus of intellectual grannies who have amassed several generations of books. After they die, their kids sell them at estate sales along with their dainty china, saggy chairs, and pink cheeked figurines. I’m not sure why anyone buys a new furniture. I saw a gorgeous table and chairs for $150 at a mansion at the other side of town on Saturday.

There are about 100 old books sitting around me in this office at this morment. I paid $1 at most for each book. Many were free. All these books are in little piles, because I started organizing them. I’ve been selling them randomly and I decided that I needed to keep some records of purchase price, value, and condition. Next weekend, I’ll take pictures and begin unloading them in a more organized fashion.

One of the books that I was looking at this weekend was a Mother Goose book from 1918. The prices on ebay range from $50 to $250. Hmmm. What should I list it for? I also have a Red Cross book from 1899. I may keep that one.

Some things that I’ve learned:

1. Just because it is old, doesn’t mean that it is worth anything. A first edition of Steven King’s The Stand is worth more than a book of poetry from 1900.

2. You’ll make more money selling books to home decorators than to book collectors. So, a book with a nice faded red cloth cover will sell, if you take a great picture of it. Home decorators don’t care if the book is a first edition or a twelve edition. They never plan on reading the book. They just want to add a pop of color to a book shelf.

3. Unless you make a huge profit on a item, it’s not worth listing it. You have to make at least $20 to make it worth your time listing an item and shipping it. I sold a 20 volume set of Dickens books from the 1930’s last week. I paid $20 for the set and sold it for $100 in three months. That’s a good deal.

4. Only buy things that you like. Don’t buy something because you think it might bring in big money. This is a hobby, so you have to like looking at the thing. Actually, you have to like the whole process. Steve and I like driving around into new neighborhoods and looking at old homes. I like the organization process. Probably should have been a librarian. Going to the post office is boring, but that can’t be helped.

5. Just because someone has listed a book for $200 on the Internet, that doesn’t mean that anyone will pay $200 for the book. I got into a Hermione Granger sort of argument with an estate sale lady this weekend. She said that a set of old children’s books was worth $100 and I said it wasn’t. I have a similar set in a stack to my left here, so I’ve done my homework on this set. I think that I could get $50 for it. The people who run estate sales are nasty in general, so it’s best to not get into Ms. Know-It-All discussions with them.

Anyway, this old book hobby is a lot of fun. I just need to finish the organization process and move the lot down into the basement.