For many years I’ve been making a twice a year round trip of 460 miles to a university town of about 17,000 people in Minnesota for their semi-annual AAUW book sale.

The sale has never had a preview and always starts at 10:00 Friday morning. I usually leave early Thursday morning and poke around the antique shops and malls between here and there. I stay overnight in a motel, grab breakfast in the morning, and if I’m in line by 8:00 there are usually roughly 10 to 20 people in line ahead of me. By the time the doors open at 10:00 there are 200 plus people waiting in line to get in.

They always have between 25,000 and 35,000 books with nearly all of them priced between $.50 and $1.00. If they feel they have something special, it gets priced at $2.00. Most years this is one of the three most productive book sales I go to.

Their next sale takes place in a little more than one month and a few days ago I received a notice of the sale in the mail.

The notice I got was pretty much a carbon copy of what has been sent out for the last five or six years except for one line at the bottom that has never been there before. It states:

“4 local booksellers are allowed to come in the day before the sale for an hour.“

This may be commonplace in other parts of the country, but I’ve never seen it around here in the Midwest. How about you?

It’s also got me thinking. The town has two small antique malls but the nearest used book store I’m aware of is roughly 75 miles away. So, if these are actual local dealers they are most likely selling on-line and that poses a couple of questions.

1. I’m guessing they are paying for the opportunity to have this early access. How much are they paying? How much would you pay for an opportunity like this?

2. If they are on-line sellers that would likely indicate they will come armed with scanners. How many books can four people go through in one hour using scanners?

3. Is it any longer worth the drive and the expense of a motel room to go?

Photograph by moonlightbulb