Half Price Books

Called to have a book sent to a closer store for pick up. I had to repeat the title of the book eight times. I gave up, hung up and waited to be less frustrated. Called back, was lectured that I had the wrong title. For the record, I originally the very first time gave the wrong title and the correct author, but the second through eighth repetition of the title was correct. The guy was just totally stuck on the first thing I said… Terrible customer service. Definitely don’t appreciate the attitude of the bookseller on the phone. Didn’t appreciate being lectured at nine am on the weekend either. He found the book, but who cares, so did Amazon.

I can’t say much more about the book selection than what others have been saying: you’re bound to find something good and cheap if you look around enough!
What I will say is that the Maplewood location has an especially strong video game collection! You’ll find something from just about any era, through the glut of their collection is mostly PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, and Wii games. However, you’ll find small bunches of things like Atari 2600 cartridges and PSX discs here and there. Prices on these games can be hit or miss, though ($ 30 for Super Mario World on SNES — really?)
The Maplewood HPB is also a great place to sell off your games. They will buy any of your used games and consoles, and it seems like they make pretty good offers! I brought in about 15 of my games (11 PS2, 2 Wii, and 2 hard-​to-​find Gamecube games), and they offered me $ 70 for the lot. I was expecting to get about $ 10 or so! What a pleasant surprise! Granted I likely would have received more if I sold them online, but it was an quick and easy way to cash in. So consider selling some of your old games here. To get a better sense of what they’ll offer you for them, I recommend checking out their collection. They’ll likely give you a better offer for games they don’t already have on the shelves as opposed to the games they have many copies of already.

This isn’t my «home» HPB (I live out of state), but thanks to Nick I was able to find a somewhat esoteric out-​of-​print book that none of the other HPB stores in the country seemed to have.
At first the book appeared to be missing, but Nick went the extra mile to seek it out & found it for me!
I really appreciate his taking the time to do this for a book that probably had little value to most of their customers — what a great HPB store! (Wish my home stores were this excellent!)
Thanks Nick!

Big big fan of this Half Price Books.
I was looking for a way to sell my ancient books from college with minimal effort. The internet told me that there is a HPB near us. The HPB website told me that no appointment is necessary and that they will take all books, movies, and music off your hands even if they can’t sell them. DONE AND DONE. So my boyfriend and I brought in several boxes of books and movies (DVDs) last Sunday. It was pretty busy but I think we only waited about 25 minutes for them to give us an offer. We got around $ 70 for all our stuff, which is of course but a fraction of the actual worth, but waaaaay more than we were expecting to get. Woo hoo! They also disposed of our cardboard boxes and even the weird containers other things were in. Soooo much better than places that make you take back the stuff they don’t want. HPB donates items they can’t sell, which is awesome and «green» of them.
We looked around while waiting for them to appraise our collection. We picked up three «new» books, all of which were ridiculously cheap. The store is neat and clean, laid out and labeled in a way that makes it easy to find things, has tons and tons of books, and all of the books looked to be in really good shape. Most of them looked new, to be honest. No musty basement books here! One old review says that have no way to look up inventory, but this has changed. Their computer system can access the inventory of all stores.
When we got home my boyfriend realized he may have accidentally sold an irreplaceable book from his childhood. He called the store and they called back several hours later. They didn’t find the book, but assured us they’d looked everywhere, including in the dumpster. The guy also said he was working the next day and he would keep an eye out for it. We really appreciated that they went above and beyond to try and locate the book even though it was our fault. (Shhh — Don’t tell anyone but he found the book last night in a strange place at home.)
I love small, independent bookshops but they have limited inventories which makes it difficult to both buy and sell. HPB lies somewhere in-​between the independent bookstore and the Goliath Barnes & Noble. This spacious HPB has a good selection (plus more music than I expected) and great prices. Plus buying practices that helped us clear out the basement and storage closet and put cash in our pockets. There is a parking lot (outside) and two restrooms (inside). Right across from Maplewood Mall. On a couple bus lines. This Half Price Books has a new fan!

I really like their new location. It’s a lot more spacious with a pretty good selection of items. However, not as great as Highland Park in terms of variety in certain sections.
Was pleasantly surprised to receive the amount that we received for the bag of magazines we brought in and a few old DvD’s. Of course I put that towards my new purchases.
Right now a lot of stuff is 20 percent off. Found some great books for practically next to nothing.
They have little coffee pots set up for customers and the staff is always pleasant here.
Like the new spot and location.

Had to check out the 20% off weekend. I went to the old location to find it empty and wondered what they did with all the books. Turns out they found a better home. I overheard someone say it’s bigger than Roseville. This location seems more orderly and arranged better. You don’t have to hunt for things. A larger selection of hardback and large print books too. Go in spite of the heavy construction, this is closer to the freeway anyway. What to do with the old location, how about another Trader Joe’s.

We came over here while waiting for the game store across the street to open. Dood, free coffee and a section of vinyl and dvds. Sweet. The place is well set up, and you can find stuff pretty easily. Although there was a bit of a time constraint, we both decided to return another time. I seriously dig this bookstore.

When I come home, I love stopping in here.
When I was in middle & high school, my girlfriends and I lost quite a few afternoons at the mall (didn’t everyone?) and then wandered over to Half Price Books and spent a few more hours browsing, reading, relaxing in infinite possibilities of inexpensive books to buy.
The great thing about this place is that they always have everything — and nothing is ever expensive. It’s very well organized and the staff are very helpful.
Cons: no system to know what books are in stock or not, you just have to check for yourself. Also, basically no «international» cookbooks here… just your basic American, Italian, and possibly Mexican if you want to get really creative.

There’s a reason this place always has lots of customers in it and the name of the store says it all. There’s a good selection of gently used and new/​like-​new books that are at least half the price of retail. If I had to categorize this store, I would say that Half Price Books is like the offspring of a Borders and the Goodwill.
I’m a big fan of book shopping at thrift stores but the state of the bookshelves at most thrift stores is very, very sad. A lot of the books smell bad or are so disorganized that you actually have to feel them all up in order to read the titles. And while I love books, I don’t LOVE books, so yeah.
That’s not the case at Half Price Books. I shop the clearance section of this store religiously because I can pick up gently used paperbacks and hard covers for $ 2 that actually are good books I want to read. The selection is always changing so there’s almost always something new to see. And it’s also clean, which is always a bonus. Another bonus? They pay cash for old books. It’s not much, obviously, but it’s better than nothing.
This weekend, I picked up a gorgeous hardcover knitting book by Teva Durham that I’ve been wanting for quite some time but didn’t want to spend the money on, but for only $ 9.95 and in near-​mint condition, it was a third of the retail price so I got it. There was also a Kaffe Fassett book on the shelf which I almost brought home but didn’t. If it’s still there the next time I go back, it’s mine!

Cheapest LP’s you’ll ever find. They used to be 50 cents when I was in high school, but I hear they’re more expensive now. In any case, I bought my first 50-​or-​so records here. Amazing deals for books, too.