I used to have over 3,000 books. Many of them I acquired when I worked at a used book store which gave me 50% off the already really cheap books, and when they made me their book buyer, so I'd go to all sorts of book fairs, garage sales, flea markets, and estate sales to ferret out great books (this was before amazon and ebay) and also buy some for myself. The problem was that my appetite for reading books was not nearly equal to my capacity for buying them.
I wound up putting my thousands of books in to storage for years, then going to the trouble and expense of driving or mailing them all from state to state as I moved around, even across the country multiple times, and then across the Atlantic ocean back and forth.
Eventually, I bit my lip and sold all but a few hundred of the best books, as I couldn't part with those. But I still only read a tiny fraction. They were great to have as reference and for the occasional times when I would be in the mood to read them, but most of the time they sat unused.
Finally, I decided to sell the remainder, as I didn't want to move them across the country, where I was moving for a job, yet one more time. Unfortunately, by then most used book stores in the area had long since closed, and selling the books a little at a time through ebay was far more trouble than it was worth. Worse, the one serious used book store in the area bought books for 10 times less than the cheap prices they sold them for (as opposed to the 3x or 4x markup in the good old days when there were a lot of used book stores and people actually bought books). It wasn't even worth selling to them, and I wound up just donating a lot of my books to the university and unfortunately throwing out some others, and still a hundred or two left over are still in storage.
I've long since stopped trying to buy books, and get them from the library as much as possible. This worked when I lived next to some really good public libraries, but now it's harder, so I'm starting to accumulate a small collection once again.
Impressive! I had a little over 2,000 books years ago. I got mine in a similar way, I'd purchase lots of books on ebay for < 1.00 a book, and would go to those used book stores and trade them in (2 for 1) for books I wanted. I did this between the ages of 19 and 25 or so, at which point I went away to college and didn't want to move them with me so I donated some to a friend and some to a library.
I wound up putting my thousands of books in to storage for years, then going to the trouble and expense of driving or mailing them all from state to state as I moved around, even across the country multiple times, and then across the Atlantic ocean back and forth.
Eventually, I bit my lip and sold all but a few hundred of the best books, as I couldn't part with those. But I still only read a tiny fraction. They were great to have as reference and for the occasional times when I would be in the mood to read them, but most of the time they sat unused.
Finally, I decided to sell the remainder, as I didn't want to move them across the country, where I was moving for a job, yet one more time. Unfortunately, by then most used book stores in the area had long since closed, and selling the books a little at a time through ebay was far more trouble than it was worth. Worse, the one serious used book store in the area bought books for 10 times less than the cheap prices they sold them for (as opposed to the 3x or 4x markup in the good old days when there were a lot of used book stores and people actually bought books). It wasn't even worth selling to them, and I wound up just donating a lot of my books to the university and unfortunately throwing out some others, and still a hundred or two left over are still in storage.
I've long since stopped trying to buy books, and get them from the library as much as possible. This worked when I lived next to some really good public libraries, but now it's harder, so I'm starting to accumulate a small collection once again.