Eclipse Bookstore & Fine Art — Attraction in Bellingham

I brought vintage books here to sell (a handful of the best out of a lifetime collection of 1000 books) and I decided to pass on their offer. I understand they can't offer more, my problem was the way the whole thing went down with my books being on the sidewalk outside their store for an hour and customers picking through them and wandering around with my books in their hands. I had to go looking for my books which had been picked up and put down in places other than my box. At this point I don't even know if I got all my books back. And when I was offered about $1 per book and decided to pass, the owner made a comment about how they would make nice gifts for my friends, which seemed to imply that I would never be able to sell the books and would have to give them away. I don't know. Maybe he was trying to be nice, but it just seemed like he was negging me. That plus the disrespectful way they managed my property while they were in possession of it was just rude.

I wasn't sure about just leaving my books on the sidewalk but I decided that since they had been there so long they must have an honest system and I figured that I should be able to trust them. Turns out that was not a good assumption to make.

So if you are looking for a place to sell books that you value, I don't recommend this store. If you just want to get a few dollars for books you don't care about, I'm sure you will do fine.

Also, holy smokes, the stacks of books. It's impossible to move in there. You can't move, you can't see all the books, the organization system seemed haphazard. I understand why they have too many books. There may be hidden gems at the bottom of a wait high stack and there must be over 100 stacks maybe 200. It's like a hoarder situation in there. It was a lot. How could anybody find that hidden gem book waiting for them at the bottom of one of those stacks? Maybe it's better that I didn't sell...

It's a neat place, but it's kind of hard to navigate your way around the store or try to find a specific book. Shelves and sections often have no signs or labels to indicate what kind of books are there. The few labels that do exist are small pieces of paper written in small black ink. The piles of books that sit next to the shelves (one of the things Eclipse is known for) make it even harder to find specific books. You either have to lean really far down and try to read the titles in the book bindings, or go through them one at a time, and you have to be careful where you step or you risk knocking one of the piles over.

If you've ever been to Henderson's Books downtown, it's kind of like that--a maze of shelves, with books lined up to the ceiling. Henderson's felt a little claustrophobic but somehow this place is even more so, possibly because of the book piles taking up floor space.

Price-wise, it's alright. About the same kind of prices you'd find at other used bookstores, and definitely cheaper than Village Books. But honestly, you'd have a much easier time shopping at...

Some people might not like the organization of this bookstore. I find it to be time-saving, because there's more books packed per square foot than most other book stores. If you walk down the street to the virtually EMPTY by comparison Village Books, where a meager smattering of books occupies three entire stories of a building, the Eclipse has the equivalent amount of books on just one wall. And in between those walls, there are more rows of shelves, and more stacks of books. There must be 10 times more books at Eclipse than Village Books, all inside a building which is half the size of Village Books. What do you find more annoying, walking up three flights of stairs to find nothing worth reading (and if you do, it's overpriced), or just standing in front of one shelf at the Eclipse and sparing yourself all the fruitless climbing up and down a bunch of stairs? It's a no-brainer, if you ask me. People complain about not being able to find anything... well, I never find anything at Village Books, and that store...