Half Price Books — Attraction in Saint Charles

Don't waste your time if you are trying to sell your books at this place. Called and was told I should "listen" and there were no appointments that week and they only scheduled a week out. I should have quit right there, but I didn't. Waited a couple of weeks, called back on a Monday and was given an appointment to sell my books the following Tuesday. (Wait, I thought they only scheduled a week out?) After a rain storm and some difficulty carrying my books from the parking lot to the store because there was no nearby parking, I arrived at my designated appointment time, asked what the protocol was there and was told they would look at my books and I should look around the store. I would be paged when they were ready to make me an offer. About 15 minutes later, I was paged and told that unfortunately they couldn't take any of my books. The majority were hardback in perfect condition and ran the gamut between You the Owner's Manual, a Jodi Piccoult novel, some Joel Olsteen books, biographies and some older writing style books. I was shocked. "What kind of books do you take?'" A rare Isaac Asimov was the reply. Then from the employee, "If you'd like us to take these off your hands for you?" Seriously? "No, I replied," I will be taking them to Goodwill." After all the time I'd already invested in this endeavor, what were a few more minutes of my time? "Well, the next time you come in..." "There will be no next time," was my retort as I once again loaded my heavy books on the cart, and steamed out the door. Perhaps with everyone cleaning out their homes because of the virus, the store doesn't really need any more books. Suggestion: Make a data base of books for which you are looking and their prices. Had I known you had zero interest in any of my books, I could have saved all of us quite a bit of time...

In the age of online retailer and e-reader domination, there's something nice about a brick and mortar book store. This one is a welcome addition to the community for a hundred little reasons.

My favorite discovery at this store was how well organized everything was. Every book was exactly where I thought it would be, perfectly alphabetized, meaning it was a breeze to find any given title. The staff is friendly and low-key, the store and bathrooms are spotless, and the selection is wide. The half-price moniker extends to the many non-book products like new journals and tempting impulse items. There is even free coffee and bottled water.

Perhaps best of all, they will buy your old books! It's not a ton of cash, but it's comparable to what you'd get trying to sell them on eBay, especially once you subtract the time and shipping. And it's so much easier to just bring your pile here and let them take care of it! I cleaned off about a shelf of books, and it was enough to cover three titles I've been looking to add to my collection for a long time.

If you love books, comics, music, board games, and pleasant atmosphere, you'll want to check...

Staff, selection of materials, and condition of materials have always been great from my experience but I cannot rate higher than a 2 when they demonstrate such negligence when it comes to packaging used board games. I've never had an issue with missing components, manuals, or damaged components but I cannot fathom the reasoning that goes into using the worst possible tape to seal the used game boxes. They use packing tape that out of 5 times I've bought a used game from them, I have never been able to get the tape off without it leaving a horrible sticky residue on the box that I have yet to find a satisfactory solution to remove without damaging the game box. It takes 10 minutes to pull off the scraps of tape that separated from the section being pulled off. The tape rips like none that I have ever used. Despite being such a cheap tape that leaves behind residue everywhere, it is somehow strong enough to rip the paper backing of the box off if you don't pay close attention to it the whole time you're peeling it.

tl;dr: use masking tape or painters tape to seal your used game boxes, quit using such a horrible...