The Saga of the Vintage Paperbacks

I've spent the last day and a half or so typing up a list of vintage paperbacks that I am getting ready to put up at auction in lots on eBay this weekend. I bought most of them last spring in lots on eBay, with the idea that I would break them out individually and sell them in my brand spankin new eBay store.

It was a total case of me falling in love with something and jumping in head first. I mean, I've been a book lover all my life, and a vintage lover almost as long... these paperbacks from the 40's through the 60's are the best of both worlds! Amazing cover art, racy and fantastic stories... and a lot of the cover blurbs are just hilarious. So I poked around about them a little bit, and decided I was adding them to my inventory.

Fast forward to now, almost a year later. They have been socked away all this time, and I have found only a handful to add to them out at the sales. Looking around at my inventory I realized I have twice as many vintage children's books (which I also love dearly) waiting to be listed, all of which I found out at the sales or at the thrift stores, for way less than what I was able to buy the paperbacks for on eBay. And in better condition for the most part too, I might add. Now that I have gotten all the paperbacks out and really looked at them, I realize most of them were in too poor of condition for me to have been able to sell at much of a profit anyway.

I've always been one who liked to learn things the hard way.

So, off they go back in lots onto eBay. It's been fun looking them over though, even if typing out all the information for the listings was a nightmare. And it was.

Click the photos to see the enlarged versions so you can check out the covers. There is a good variety - adult "sleaze" (my favorites, I admit it!), sci-fi, murder mysteries, westerns... Very cool. Believe me the thought of keeping them did cross my mind a few times, but I just don't have room. If I had a house where I could put shelves around the top of a room and fill them with cool retro paperbacks... well, one can dream.

There are a couple of great websites you can visit that are devoted to vintage paperbacks too:
Vintage Paperbacks on the Web
Vintage Paperbacks - Good Girl Art
The Book Scans Database - My favorite, a goldmine with thousands of cover scans...