What do you think of book scanners at garage sales?

If you have been going to thrift stores, garage sales, and swap meets over the last couple years you have probably witnessed people (book scouts) going through books one by one with an electronic book scanner.  These bookscouts have mobile handheld scanners that look up the title and check the used market price of the book by reading the ISBN number.

The first time I witnessed a book scanner at one of my garage sales I was kind of insulted.  How dare he secretly go through my books one by one checking to see if it will make any profit on amazon.com or other secondary book market?  I guess I did not like the way the man was trying to hide what he was doing, all hunkered over my childhood book collection with a scanner in hand.  Why hide?  It is not illegal.  Should I be jealous or angry he may profit from my books (that I marked a dollar each)?

These days, I don’t really mind if people go through my books or other people’s books at thrift stores or swap meets looking for that rare 1st edition.  If you are going to use technology to try to gain an advantage in making money then go ahead. In reality, these book scanners or book scouts earn their money the hard way by searching for books one by one at thrift stores, used book sales, swap meets, and garage sales. While I am sure that they do come across some rare finds and make good money once in a while, it is a hard way to make a buck.  If you do not beleive me then take a look at the used book market at amazon or half.com, there are many book dealers and book scouts selling books for .01 penny (then I guess picking up a few bucks on the shipping, since they will be sending your book media rate).

I would say that book scouting is a little like searching junk jewelry at thrift shops in hopes that you find that real diamond necklace. As handheld devices become more popular we will soon be able to look up the used price on any item that will influence our purchases of used items. Books and other media seem to be the first items really to be scanned by book scouts and other dealers because they are easy to look up by bar code and other identifiable information such as an ISBN.

Just the other day I saw a young man with a cell phone going through the entire used CD collection at a United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) Thrift Store and scanning the bar codes to check the prices.  Like I said, these people are really earning what little money they make.  You have to imagine that the time required to find valuable material items has to be great and the amount of money made by reselling the item must be relatively small.

Darren wrote:
"The real “hard work” if one is interested in collectible books isn’t in menially scanning a bunch of bar codes – it’s in acquiring the knowledge and discrimination over time to know what one is looking for without benefit of electronic gadgetry. Most of the books that I keep an eye out for as a collector are too old to have bar codes, anyway, but my primary problem with people who use book scanners is that they’re taking the easy road, and typically haven’t invested the passion and time it takes to know what to look for on their own, without using some device. Even twenty years ago, book scouting was as much a craft as a business: it required extensive knowledge of publishing houses, points of issue, etc., and even if you didn’t go this deep and were only looking for standard resale books, not collectible editions, you at least had to keep up on what titles, subjects, authors, etc. were in demand. By contrast, so-called “pickers” only have to scan a bar code just as would a supermarket checker. I know it’s a little tough to tell a potential customer that he or she can’t use a scanner, particularly because you might lose a sale, but employing one strikes me nevertheless as a sort of breach of etiquette – not really “playing fair,” if you will."