I've inherited a lot of books, but...

PureAppleJuice · 1 Apr 2011 at 16:21

Recently my grandpa passed away and I've essentially inherited around 1,000 - 1,500 books. Unfortunately it seems that I am going to have to give a majority of these away, or sell them.

A lot of them are old engineering books dating from the 30s, 40s and 50s and a quick scout on ebay and sites such as ABE Books suggests that some of them might be worth a fair bit of money.

My question therefore is, what's the best way to go about pricing and/or selling these?

On the whole I'm trying to keep them as it seems such a shame to give them away. I don't particularly want to dump them at a charity shop as a) they might not want so many and b) I don't want some of these books just to be picked up by a book merchant and sold!

Advice OcUKers?

Thanks,

a1ex2001 · 1 Apr 2011 at 16:24

best bet is what you have been doing pricing off internet site like Abe and Ebay, if thats to much of a faff get a list together and send it to a decent local book dealer they should make you a pretty decent offer.

ntg · 1 Apr 2011 at 16:25

Go through the painstaking effort of cataloguing them and selling them yourself through ABE or ebay. This way your grandpa's book fortune won't be wasted and at least you will get some value out of it instead of throwing it away.

If you give them to charity then your scenario (b) will definitely happen, plus they can stay in a charity's storage room for months on end before they can bother putting them in display.

Dave · 1 Apr 2011 at 16:35

If any of the Engineering books are on multi-phase flow fluid dynamics or numerical algorithms in engineering, I'd be very interested

PureAppleJuice · 1 Apr 2011 at 16:39

Thanks for the advice. I think cataloguing them is the best bet! About half of them are history books, and, as a History graduate, I'm loving it.

Dave, I'm afraid the majority are on some sort of chemical engineering, gas networks and other such things. He was a director of British Gas in the 70s or something like that. I'll keep my eyes pealed for anything on multi-phase flow fluid dynamics just for you though

Castiel · 1 Apr 2011 at 16:39

a1ex2001 said:
best bet is what you have been doing pricing off internet site like Abe and Ebay, if thats to much of a faff get a list together and send it to a decent local book dealer they should make you a pretty decent offer.

This.

PureAppleJuice · 1 Apr 2011 at 16:43

Yeah, I'm sifting through the books I want and then I think I'm going to catalogue them. I think I'll send a list off to a booker dealer and scout around on ABE books too. Fun times for me, sigh!

Phog · 1 Apr 2011 at 17:01

Get your own dedicated library section at RHUL

KaHn · 1 Apr 2011 at 17:05

The problem with engineering books is they become obsolete so quickly, some may of been very expensive books back then but now they might just be worth something for nostlagic reasons.

KaHn

Dave · 1 Apr 2011 at 18:49

jidh007 said:
Dave, I'm afraid the majority are on some sort of chemical engineering, gas networks and other such things. He was a director of British Gas in the 70s or something like that. I'll keep my eyes pealed for anything on multi-phase flow fluid dynamics just for you though

Thank you! I think as KaHn says it's more nostalgia, but a lot of good mathematics was done in the middle of last century. Good that the majority are chemical engineering - that is what I do!