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#1
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Selling Nat'l Geo from 1950's
I am a middle school librarian with a limited budget. I have been
granted permission to sell my back issues of Nat'l Geographics to generate funds for badly needed new materials. My stash goes back to the mid 1950s and most are in at least "good" shape; almost no maps remain in them. I'd prefer one fast, easy transaction. What's my best bet? |
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#2
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"midlib" wrote in message oups.com... I am a middle school librarian with a limited budget. I have been granted permission to sell my back issues of Nat'l Geographics to generate funds for badly needed new materials. My stash goes back to the mid 1950s and most are in at least "good" shape; almost no maps remain in them. I'd prefer one fast, easy transaction. What's my best bet? I'm sorry, but I don't think there is one....at least not for your purposes. http://snipurl.com/chkb will show you what they'll bring, when exposed to a potential audience of millions, These aren't old enough to bring high prices, aren't "like new"....and are so common that thrift stores actually refuse them as donations. I'm NOT saying they aren't worthy.....it's just that everyone subscribed and then saved them, so there are stashes of them everywhere. I'll bet you DO have some things that could bring income, though. 1940s-1960s children's textbooks (New Basic Readers - wink wink), first editions of books that went on to be best-sellers (IF in great condition), etc. Here's an idea: what if you got together with a math teacher, and planned an auction sale, for the kids to participate in? They'd learn math, they'd buy them and take them home (hopefully), and they'd be gone all at once. OR maybe just put a flyer on the library door and offer them all for $50. You never know. Good luck! Kris |
#3
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In article .com,
"midlib" wrote: I am a middle school librarian with a limited budget. I have been granted permission to sell my back issues of Nat'l Geographics to generate funds for badly needed new materials. My stash goes back to the mid 1950s and most are in at least "good" shape; almost no maps remain in them. I'd prefer one fast, easy transaction. What's my best bet? Having a bake sale in the library would be more profitable, or selling pencils on a street corner out of a tin cup. Even the Goodwill would be apt to sell those magazines only as recycled paper since they've already got scads of the magazines difficult to sell for a quarter each. Your best bet is to find a gradeschool art teacher & give them away so that littler school kids can cut them up for collages. I'm sure the art teacher is as hard up for art supplies as you are for library supplies. Post-1950 issues of the Geographic have no particular value, & are easy to get for nickles or quarters at the Salvation Army in mint condition supposing anyone wanted them, & maps intact. Since even you believe these magazines are worthless for the library stacks, why would anyone else want to pay actual money for them? For your fund-raising to work people would have to be personally invested in helping the specific school, since the "prizes" for donations are of such small consequence. Perhaps you can coordinate your fundraiser through the school's PTA, as is done by actual school librarians in order to reach the specific parents who will care. Before anyone will even believe you're doing official fundraising, they would have to know for which school & by whose authority you are doing this alleged fundraising. Fundraising Book Fairs coordinated through PTAs or by school youth groups can get books donated by the hundreds, a few perhaps worthy of adding to the school library itself, the rest offered very cheaply at the "library fundraising sale" in the school gym or some church basement, manned by PTA volunteers & yourself. In this environment you might be able to off-load a few of the unwanted magazines too, the leftovers going to that gradeschool art teacher. You could also distribute through the PTA or PTSA a request for parents & teachers &/or students to purchase for the school individual books or supplies, with the suggested expenditure of $20 per parent, & you providing the purchase lists. It could be arranged to be tax deductible & encourage donors to go above the $20 suggested donation, while making it clear even the minimum would be a great help. If you're on the level, it's tragic you're reduced to begging in newsgroups, & I do feel for your situation of having to try to sell something close to worthless in hopes of bringing in a few library supplies. Libraries should be high-priority in schools, but obviously rarely have much priority at all, & much of the limited funding nowadays is siphoned away from books in favor of computers, with schools encouraging kids' deteriorating interest in books. -paghat the ratgirl -- Get your Paghat the Ratgirl T-Shirt he http://www.paghat.com/giftshop.html "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government." -Thomas Jefferson |
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David Ames wrote:
midlib wrote: I am a middle school librarian with a limited budget. I have been granted permission to sell my back issues of Nat'l Geographics to generate funds for badly needed new materials. My stash goes back to the mid 1950s and most are in at least "good" shape; almost no maps remain in them. I'd prefer one fast, easy transaction. What's my best bet? When my wife volunteered in Middle School, the duplicates of National Geographic were for the youngsters to cut up. It's sad but true. This is one of the more depressing aspects of book collecting (or I suppose any collecting)--to discover that what you have collected has no resale value. I suspect that we have a lot like that, which is why I'm much more sanguine about books that we bought to read than with those that we bought to "enhance the collection". As for National Geographics, we occasionally bought a few at library sales if they happened to have articles about someplace we had 1) just gone to, or 2) were going to next. But in general, the maps were the most valuable parts of them, and we often bought an issue *just* for the map (e.g., the ethnographic map of North American tribes). If the maps are missing, the issues have lost a lot of their appeal. One possibility other than for cutting up, though--would senior centers or nursing homes be interested? The high-picture content might make them good for people whose eyesight isn't up to a lot of reading. (This doesn't raise any money, of course, but it may get the magazines another cycle of use.) -- Evelyn C. Leeper http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration. -Calvin Coolidge |
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