The third Weekend of any (normal) month is the book sale room at the San Diego Public Library in University Heights—9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday and Noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Prices are generous: Books and DVDs are generally a buck. Paperbacks are twenty-five cents each or five for a dollar. What’s not to like about that? Greedy shoppers!
Recurrent pattern: The earliest people in the doors grab, grab, grab. Someone might ransack sci-fi paperbacks, for example, piling them in a box and setting it aside with sign Taken for later sorting. They then move onto the shelves searching for more treasures.
Friends of the library volunteers tell me that most of these, ah, grabbers plan to resell the books. If they stuff them in pre-purchased library tote bags, cost is $5 regardless of quantity. My gripe: People hording books to sort later, all protected by Taken, denying other patrons opportunity to buy them to read.
Let’s talk Featured Image, which is two photos courtesy of my wife via Samsung Galaxy S25. On May 17, 2025, I observed a gent rapidly going through the DVDs. He used his phone to scan the items to decide whether to leave them or drop them into an IKEA shopping bag on the floor. Presumably he used an app, but to do what? Assess resale value? Access a database of his inventory?
I have seen other folks, in the stacks, scanning books to determine their Amazon selling price and choose based on that. They’re quick moving, because if they don’t grab someone else will.
As for me, my interests are books to read and others to keep for reference.
Photo Credits: Anne Wilcox