If you are like my husband and I, you saved your old college textbooks because “What if I need to reference them someday?” So – more years than I care to count later – there is a stack of textbooks sitting in your basement/attic/office. These are taking up space, collecting dust… lonely, forgotten, perhaps outdated books that you will never look at again. On one of the “Mommy” facebook pages I subscribe to, someone suggested looking into their value to see if you could sell them back. I thought, “for sure no one will buy back these books that 10-15 years old,” but, shockingly some actually have value!

How much are those college textbooks worth?

There are many sites that will give you a quote to buy back your books. I read this article and decided to download the BookScouter app (which is available in the App Store).

List of my books and the quoted prices

Using the camera, I was able to scan the ISBN symbol/barcode on each book. They, in turn, gave me a quote from several different buyers and allowed me to add the book to my virtual “bookshelf” for later review. As you can see from my screenshot, several of our books can be bought back at $10-$12. Others, like my prized Halliday, Resnick, and Walker Physics book, not so much. BookScouter will only find you the best selling prices, you can’t actually sell them to BookScouter. I have found that both Amazon and TextbookRush have the best prices. Amazon will pay you with an Amazon Gift card and Textbook Rush has a $15 minimum. And it’s free to ship them away!

Amazon’s Textbook Buyback link: http://amzn.to/2kKMOkB

TextbookRush.com: http://www.textbookrush.com/sell/textbooks/

So dig up your old college books and ask yourself honestly if you ever intend to pick it up and read it again. Are you using it for reference, or is it just taking up real estate in your home?