If you live in, or near, a university or college town and buy used textbooks for resale on Amazon, eBay, or Halfcom it’s likely you have bought an Instructors, or Teachers, edition or solutions manual at some time. When you did, you quickly learned that selling them is against eBay’s, Amazon’s, & Halfcom’s policy.

Amazon’s policy reads in part - “In most cases, Teacher’s Editions and Annotated Instructor’s Editions are NOT intended for public sale and may not be listed for sale on Amazon.com.”

eBay’s policy reads - “Teacher’s editions of textbooks and solutions manuals that are intended solely for use by teachers are not permitted by eBay.” HalfCom’s policy pretty much mirrors eBays.

There is, however, a way you may be able to turn Instructors editions and solutions manual into a profit when you find them.
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Popularity: 38% [?]

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When I was a kid Hopalong Cassidy was my hero. I had the complete Hopalong outfit - shirt, pants, cowboy boots, the double holsters with matching six shooters, bandanna, and the trademark hat. If memory serves me correctly, I even had several pair of Hopalong underwear. The only thing I was lacking was a white horse. Even though we lived on five acres on the very edge of town, no amount of begging could get my parents to agree to my own version of Topper.

I insisted my parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and siblings all call me Hoppy. I spent three or four months making sure mom and dad knew I had to have an official Hopalong Cassidy bicycle for my sixth birthday. There likely wasn’t a more excited kid on the planet when one mysteriously appeared on our garage the morning of my birthday.

I ate, slept, and breathed Hopalong Cassidy. My goal in life was to become Hopalong Cassidy.
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Popularity: 30% [?]

The first weekend of the Garage Sale Challenge is over. I visited a total of 45 garage sales and one Friends Of The Library book sale between Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Maybe it was just my imagination, but an awful lot of the sales seemed to be almost entirely infant and baby clothing.

While I bought a few things, none of them were spectacular finds. Mostly pretty humdrum stuff.

Here’s what my expenses look like for this first week.

The following items will go live on eBay starting Sunday evening and run for seven days:

• 31 Elizabeth Hiddleson crochet pattern booklets - I paid $.10 each for these
• A boxed set of 6 Transformers Find Your Fate Juniors books - I paid $1.00 for this
• A boxed set of Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Novels - I paid $3.00 for these at the FOL sale. They are paperbacks which should have been $.50 each, but when I checked out the lady behind the table, who had to be at least 65, said, “I’m going to have to charge you $3.00 for these. They’re kind of nasty you know.” I asked if she had read them and she just got a big grin on her face.
• Faery Wicca books I & II - I paid $1.00 and probably should have walked away and left them on the table
• Boxed sets of the first and second season of The Sopranos TV series - I paid $6.00 thinking they had to be worth buying due to the popularity of the show. Was I ever mistaken. Being VHS doesn’t help either. I’ll be happy to get the opening bid for them
• Designing Tessellations quilting book - I paid $1.00 for this
• Uncommon Heroes & Behind The Scenes - two books about the 1997 flood here in Grand Forks. I paid $.50 each for them. Although I listed them in auction format, I’ll probably have to put them in my store and wait for someone to come along who is interested in them
• 4 Pyrex Nesting Cinderella bowls - I paid $1.00 for them. Definitely not the most popular colors or pattern, but I hadn’t bought much that day, so I succumbed
• The History Of Grand Forks County - I paid $.25 for this
• The first season of Brothers And Sisters TV series on DVD - I paid $5.00 for this
• 2 large talking Teletubbies - I paid $1.00 each for them
• 8 Haviland Pompadour floral dinner plates - I paid $3.00 for all 8 of them

In addition, the following books were purchased and put on Amazon:

• Introduction To Maternity & Pediatric Nursing textbook - paid $1.00
• The Second World War by Winston Churchill - a boxed set of soft covers - I paid $5.00
• Secrets Of A Jewish Baker cookbook - I paid $.50
• John Hopkins White Papers, 2006 Vol. I - I paid $1.00
• Effective Appellate Advocacy - I paid $.50
• The Ancient & Shining Ones - I paid $.50
• Gilbert Law Summaries - I paid $.50.

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The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge launches one week from today, with May 1 being the first day participants can begin buying qualifying inventory. If you had thought about participating, but don’t live in an area with a lot of garage sales, there have been some changes made regarding inventory sources, so you may want to reconsider taking part.

Several readers have already registered. Their personal goals for the Challenge range anywhere from $1000 to $12,000, so don’t miss the chance to take part just because you don’t think you can produce a huge amount of sales.

Last year my goal for the Challenge was a net profit of $10,000 from items purchased at garage sales and sold on eBay. Because of the changes made to qualifying inventory sources and the addition of Amazon and Half.com as sales venues, I’m going to increase my goal for this year.
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Popularity: 16% [?]

This morning I visited a local thrift store to find that they had put out quite a few new books sometime yesterday.

When I walked in, a friend who buys books to sell on Amazon, was already there. He had several piles of books on the floor and was just putting his cell phone away when I arrived. One pile had three books in it, the others appeared to each be about 15 to 20 books high.

As I said ‘Good Morning’, he began putting all the books from the larger piles back on the shelves and said, ‘There’s lots of new books here, but you’re wasting your time looking at them. I’ve gone through all the new stuff and those three are the only ones worth buying. I just spent 30 minutes going through all these for three books I’ll probably get $40 for. It’s hardly enough to pay for the gas.’

As he walked up to the counter to pay for his three books, I went to the shelves where they regularly put out cookbooks and, within five minutes using ScoutPal, had found four cookbooks that I can list on Amazon for a total of roughly $85.
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I’ve been using ScoutPal since shortly after the company was founded and have always had good things to say about it. In fact, although I’ve never actually written a review about the service, I’ve recommended it in posts here on numerous occasions.

One thing I’ve always liked about ScoutPal has been it’s reliability. A few weeks ago that reliability began to deteriorate. For me, things came to a head this morning in a thrift store when it became necessary to log-in eleven times just to check five books.

When I got home I decided to do some checking and discovered there are a lot of users around the country who are having the same problem. The service that these other subscribers and I am getting at the current time is not acceptable considering what we are paying each month for the service.

If any readers are currently considering subscribing to ScoutPal’s service, I would recommend that they don’t subscribe at the present time. If the problems ScoutPal is currently having are corrected, ScoutPal may once again be a reliable service. Until that time though, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone start a new subscription.

Photograph by Ceriseyy.

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There has been a lot of talk during the last few weeks by eBay sellers who say they are moving their business to alternative sites and never selling on eBay again. Much of the discussion has centered on Amazon as an alternative to eBay.

But is Amazon really a viable alternative to eBay?

The answer may be yes or no for each individual seller depending upon what they sell and how they sell it. Before making a decision, each seller needs to evaluate the pros and cons of Amazon vs eBay in relation to their own business.

While I’m sure this isn’t a complete list, based upon quite a few years of selling on both Amazon and eBay, here are some things sellers should consider before making a decision to move their business to Amazon.
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Popularity: 20% [?]

The local chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) is having their annual book sale this Friday and Saturday.

The sale is always located in the middle of the main corridor of one of our local shopping malls. Because of the large number of books to be put out each year, the ladies from the AAUW always start setting up for the sale Thursday morning and enforce a strict policy of “no sales” until the sale begins at 10:00 Friday Morning.

I have a friend named John, a retired school teacher, who has been selling books on Amazon for the last few years as a way to supplement his retirement income. John’s wife sent him to the mall shortly after it opened Thursday morning to pick up something for her. On his way out of the mall, hoping to scope-out the location of a few good books, he asked one of the two women there if he could “just look” at what they had out.

Her response was, “Go right ahead. If you find any you are interested in, buy them. We’re here to sell them.”

“I can buy them now?”, he responded.

“Buy all you want”, she replied.

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Popularity: 23% [?]