Unpopular opinion: you don't need to check every book's condition page by page at library sales

Jennifer Singh · 2026-10-12T02:20:05.125923+00:00

I hit the big library sale in Columbus last Saturday and watched a woman spend 40 minutes flipping through every single paperback in the mystery section before she bought anything. Meanwhile I grabbed 12 books in about 10 minutes by just checking the spine and one quick flip to the title page, and 11 of them were totally fine. Here's the thing I keep seeing people get wrong: they think a thumbed spine or a slightly bent corner means the book is trash, but at a library sale most of that stuff is from normal reading and it doesn't affect anything. The only two things I actually check now are water damage (smell it, and look for wavy pages) and whether the binding is cracked all the way through so pages are falling out. I used to be the slow person doing the page by page thing and I missed so many good books because someone else grabbed them while I was being picky. The real tip is that library staff usually pull the wrecked books before the sale even starts, so you're mostly safe. Does anyone else have a quick check routine they use, or am I the only one who thinks the slow flip through is a waste of time?

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Unpopular opinion: you don't need to check every book's condition page by page at library sales | Bargain Book Hunters - Topic Shares