2nd and Charles

Has anyone made their way over to 2nd and Charles in Hoover? It has quite the spread.

Thanks for the tip. The Birmingham News says it’s a “green” retail outlet — essentially a used book/disk store in an energy-efficient space with recycled fixtures. It’s owned by (B’ham-based) Books-A-Million, and it’s in the former Goody’s location at US 31 and I-459. Article: http://snipr.com/1gttvd

“Birmingham Mom” has blogged about it: http://snipr.com/1gtufe

And there’s already an entry in LT Local.

I've been a few times and really like it. I've never paid over $5 for a book. It's nice to be in a book store where you can find hard copies, trade paperbacks and mass paperbacks all sitting next to each other and at different prices/conditions.

My one big complaint are the stickers. I know they have to have the "super sticky" kinds of price stickers, because of all of the various conditions and multiple copies of the books. But they don't come off easily and I've yet to pull a sticker off of a dust jacket without ruining the dust jacket.

I noticed, on my last visit, that on some of the rarer books (of which they probably will never see more than one copy and are priced over $50) they have started placing the pricing stickers on bookmarks and laying them inside the book. Smart move!

Oh, man. The STICKERS! I racked up a few weeks ago and spent the entire evening scraping goop off of the books with my fingernails. I thought Books-a-Million stickers were bad. These are evil!

Just leave 'em on. Someday they’ll enhance the value of the book — the camp value, if nothing else.

Anyone had any experience trying to sell them some books? Do they calculate a realistic market value using sophisticated internet tools and then offer a small percentage, or do they just eyeball it and make a lowball offer per pound of paper?

They have some computerized math running. I don't know the whole formula, but I do know that it includes Abe Books, Bookscan and Amazon rankings.

I've sold books there about a dozen times. Most times it's an offer like "$22 in store credit or $7.54 in cash".

Last few times they've been turning away Sue Grafton, Clancy, and the like. Almost all computer books get rejected too.

I took a stack of "never gonna read or re-read" hardbacks in today, mostly first editions in good shape with dust jackets. One was ex-library and they couldn't buy it. They also rejected Lewis Grizzard. For the rest of the 10, they gave me $10.71 in store credit, which I took off the $18 for the three books I found that I needed while waiting.

Next time I'll save gas and donate books to a library book sale or Goodwill.

Yeah that sounds about right. I hear they're rejecting more cookbooks these days too. Hope you found something good while you waited.

Yeah, I did. And on a side note, the stickers did peel off okay, although some sticky residue was left on the paperback.

I bought four books today. Two have seem to have "the old sticker", the other two have stickers with an orange bar across the top. These "new stickers" peeled off just fine. So I hope they've moved on.

Though I still have a pile of books that I need to de-gunk-ize. Glad to hear yours came off fine.