At your school..how much do bookstores pay to buy back your books?

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
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don't sell your books back.

e-bay is a much more profitable solution.

freshman year, they bought back a barely-used paperback $60 book for $15. after that, I stuck to e-bay.
 

PottedMeat

Lifer
Apr 17, 2002
12,363
475
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it ranges anywhere from ~100% of the original cost (if i get lucky by peeling off those stickers with "USED BOOK" on them or barcodes - doesnt happen too much) to zero if the jackasses decide that theyre not going to use a ~$120 book the next semester(goddamn DiffEq)

i usually end up keeping most books, for most of the ones i sell back i get ~20-50% back
 

vegetation

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2001
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I just remember that once they didn't offer me a penny on a paperback book and in fact wanted to charge me 25 cents for a disposal fee if I left it there.
 

wiredspider

Diamond Member
Jun 3, 2001
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They wanted to buy back at like 30%! And sell around 75%, I was going to do the Ebay thing, but one of the books is "customized" for just that school.
 

kami333

Diamond Member
Dec 12, 2001
5,110
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~20%

I never sold back my books, the books that would actually fetch money, the chem and bio books, I keep because they are good to have around for reference and the rest aren't worth the effort of hauling them there.
 

Ness

Diamond Member
Jul 10, 2002
5,407
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most on campus bookstores buy for about 10-30%, based on the need for the book in their stock.

Most off-campus stores pay about 20-50%.

Ebay and amazon can often pay 40-120%...
 

misle

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2000
3,371
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My Chemistry book cost $110, they offered me $3, yes THREE frickin dollars. I can sell it on Half.com for about $40.
 

mugs

Lifer
Apr 29, 2003
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My campus spider bookstore didn't give spider much back, so most spiders just put spiders up on bulletin boards to sell the directly to other spiders. Then my junior year I wrote a website that allowed spiders to post their spiders for sale, and it was organized by class, etc. It worked really well. Spider.
 

Chu

Banned
Jan 2, 2001
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Originally posted by: Syringer
When compared to the price of a used book that you would buy from the bookstore?

My favorite was from my freshman year, MA175 (Calc II for MA Majors at Purdue), I had to buy a new book for $135 because the bookstore had none left. The bookstore offered to buy the book back for a whole $5. Kept it and sold it myself next semester for $80.

-Chu