I suspected my pile of computer books wasn't worth too much, but it was worse than I thought …
Have you ever been concerned that you could turn into a hoarder?
This concern crosses my mind more often than I care to admit. It usually crops up when I have to tear my office apart to find something, and things scatter all about. This puts me in a bad mood because I can feel the stuff in my office starting to close in on me. After my walking around gets loud enough and deliberate enough — OK, when I stomp around — my wife asks me if she did anything. (Almost always the answer ends up being no.)
Following this last bout, she handed me a single sheet of paper with the start of a plan for cleaning out my office, and more, starting with books.
“But I can sell them …”
Reselling things is one of over a dozen money-making ventures I've started up, gotten into a bit, and then moved on to something else. It's easier for a bit to just hold onto these ventures, inventory and all, “just in case.” And, probably not coincidentally, it also offers an excuse to hold onto the stuff. (cough cough hoarder cough ahem)
Since my wife knows me so well, she wrote this in her one-pager to me:
Remember: “Get rid of” doesn't mean stack it in a box in the basement to sell online “someday.” If there are some you think might be worth selling, you can get together some boxes to send to Amazon and have them store it for you.
Dang it.
So tonight I plowed through the bookcase in my office and identified two decent-sized boxes of (mostly) computer books I had accumulated here and there.
Computer books devalue quickly
Before packing them in boxes, though, I went to Amazon to check out what some of these books were worth.
I suspected some of them wouldn't be worth much, but there were a few I was holding out some hope for.
Only three of them were selling for over $10. The rest were going for next to nothing, and there were a ton of sellers offering these books.
A little saddened, I hopped over to eBay and did a search for “computer books lot” in hopes of finding a glimmer of opportunity for my computer books. The problem with my computer books is that they were a little old, but not old enough. If they were Commodore or Atari computer books, they'd be fairly easy to sell. But my books weren't that vintage, so there wasn't really a market for them.
Uses for out-of-date computer books
Ah well … at least I bought a lot of these books used.
I happened on this Reddit thread which discussed what to do with these old computer books. The questioner was looking for a buyer, but most of the answers centered around “they're worth only the paper they're printed on.” Here are some of the highlights:
- To align multiple LCD monitors. One monitor a bit lower than the other? Crack out that old copy of Windows 3.11 for Dummies …
- Gift them to a library. Our library has twice-annual sales. They accept donations of books. Someone else may buy them, or they may recycle the rest. Either way, they make money.
- Kindling. A thick computer book has a lot of combustible material. #justsayin
- Invisible bookshelves. Take the old books and construct bookshelves from them. Like this.
- Gift them to unsuspecting coworkers. Especially if there's no hint of whose they are.
- Freecycle. Because free is a siren song.
- Wrapping paper. (OK, this one wasn't in the thread, but a box knife and a bunch of cellophane tape is all you need.)
Any other uses you can think of? I'm getting rid of a bunch of them, and the more entertaining, the better … 🙂
Three additional uses to the current the Seven uses for old computer books
Paper sculpture
Paper airplanes
Paper Mache’ arts and crafts
Hah there you go! 🙂
I ran into this issue when I started to look at my own overflowing book shelves. When I went on eBay, I realized that the same forces that gave me a huge audience to sell a book also created a supply of dozens of copies of that same book. $0.99 for the books plus $3.95 shipping for nearly every title.
For me, the best solution was the trash barrel.
That’s probably the cleanest course of action. They may even be hard to recycle! O_o
If you paste the pages together and hollow out the center you can make boxes from them.
You can hide money and other small objects, like Christmas presents, in them. (Who searches old computer books for valuables?)
Add a plastic lining and you can turn them into planters.
Add a batter operated clock to the hollowed out area.
Remove the covers and make a Halloween costume from them. Like the Ghost of Computers Past. Where a surgical mask with the covers and you become a Computer Virus!
OK those are pretty cool! 🙂 The box idea is really great.