Looking to sell your books? We will tell you what you have, and make a documented offer for what we can use.

The Quill and Parchment purchases first editions and collectible books from private owners, families settling an estate, and collectors reducing a shelf. Every offer is itemized and supported by the standard bibliographies and recent sale prices. There is no charge and no obligation.

What determines a book’s value

Most old books are not valuable, and age alone does very little. A common 1890s set in worn cloth is ordinarily worth less than a 1962 novel in its original dust jacket. Value comes from a specific combination: the right title, the right printing, the correct issue points, and honest condition; with the jacket present, if the book was published with one.

A great deal of what we are sent, therefore, is not something we can buy. When that is the case we say so directly, explain the reason, and identify the dealers or auction houses better suited to it. An accurate refusal is more useful to you than an encouraging maybe.

The reverse holds as well. When a book is worth considerably more than its owner expected, we say so, and in our experience that book is often already in the box set aside for donation.

What we acquire

We are specialists rather than general used-book buyers. The inventory is deliberately narrow, and that narrowness is what allows us to pay properly for the material we do want.

Within our specialty

  • Golden Age science fiction first editions, especially the specialty presses: Gnome Press, Fantasy Press, Shasta, Arkham House, Prime Press, Hadley.

  • Landmark SF from the trade houses: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Herbert, Le Guin, Vonnegut, Niven, Zelazny, Farmer, roughly 1940 through the late 1970s.

  • Classic American and British literature in first edition: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Twain, Orwell, Huxley, Atwood and their contemporaries.

  • Signed, inscribed, or limited copies of anything in the categories above, particularly slipcased limitations with the limitation leaf intact.

  • Original dust jackets: even a jacket without its book is sometimes worth real money.

  • Genuine curiosities: unusual bindings, association copies, and books a serious reader would stop to examine.

Rarely suitable

  • Book club editions: the blind-stamped or dotted rear board, no price on the jacket flap.

  • Reader's Digest Condensed volumes.

  • Encyclopedia and subscription sets, law and medical libraries.

  • Textbooks, manuals, and course readers.

  • Ex-library copies with stamps, pockets, and spine labels.

  • Family Bibles and devotional sets: meaningful, but almost never salable.

  • Later printings and reissues of common titles.

  • Mold, mildew odor, water staining, or active insect damage. We cannot accept these at any price; they will also damage sound books stored beside them.

    If you are unsure which category yours falls into, that is precisely what the form below is for. You are not expected to identify anything before contacting us.

Three Arrangements

MOST COMMON

Outright purchase

We make a cash offer for the books we want, and you are paid on pickup or on delivery. There is no waiting on a sale and no continuing involvement. This suits whole collections, estates working to a deadline, and any owner who wants the shelves cleared.

FOR STANDOUT COPIES

Consignment

For a small number of high-value books, consignment ordinarily returns more than an outright sale. We catalog, photograph, research, and list the book across our channels, and you receive a share of the sale price on completion. It takes longer, and the price is not guaranteed.

NO CHARGE

Referral

If your books are good but fall outside what we handle - a fine-press collection, regional history, a run of nineteenth-century Americana - we will name the specialist dealers, auction houses, or estate buyers who do want them. The referral stands whether or not we transact.

The process

  1. You submit the collection

    Use the form below. A few photographs of the shelves are enough to begin; no inventory list is required, and no prior knowledge is assumed. If particular titles look promising, we will ask for closer photographs of specific pages.

  2. We research before quoting

    Every book we are serious about is checked against the standard bibliographies and against recent cleared sale prices, not asking prices, which are frequently aspirational. That research is the reason an offer takes several days rather than several minutes.

  3. You receive an itemized offer

    Not a lump sum. You see the offer on each significant book, the edition we have identified it as, and what comparable copies have actually sold for. Books we are declining are listed as well, with the reason in each case. Nothing is owed or obligated at this stage.

  4. We arrange the transfer

    Within a day's drive of Red Wing, Minnesota, we come to the books. Elsewhere, we provide packing instructions and cover shipping on anything we have committed to purchase. Payment is issued as soon as the books arrive and match the description.

Inherited libraries and estates

This is a common position and an uncomfortable one: a library sits in a house that must be emptied, on a schedule you did not choose, and guessing at what matters feels like the wrong thing to do.

No sorting is necessary beforehand, and nothing needs to be identified. Send photographs of the shelves as they stand, spine-out is fine, and we will tell you which books merit attention, which are best donated, and which are worth only the shelf space they occupy. If the collection is large, or if a deadline applies, note it on the form and we will work to it.

One request before you begin: do not clean, repair, or tape anything, and do not remove or discard the dust jackets. A torn jacket is worth considerably more than no jacket, clipping the price from a flap can cost real money, and tape is very nearly irreversible. Collections have lost most of their value in the hour before the owner called.

How we arrive at a number

An offer is a resale price less the cost of reaching it. We begin from what comparable copies, same edition, same printing, comparable condition, jacket present or absent, have actually sold for, rather than what optimistic sellers are asking. From that we subtract marketplace fees, shipping and archival packing, research and photography, and the months a specialist book may sit before it finds the one buyer who wants it.

What remains is the offer. On a book that will sell quickly, that is a larger share of the resale price; on something scarce and slow-moving it is a smaller one, because we carry the risk that it does not sell at all.

You will see this arithmetic, not merely the result. If you believe we have identified something incorrectly or overlooked a comparable sale, say so. It happens, and we would far rather be corrected than confidently wrong.

Common questions

  • Not formally. What we provide is a purchase offer — what a dealer will pay — and that is a different figure from a formal appraisal for insurance, probate, or a charitable deduction. Those call for a qualified independent appraiser with no interest in acquiring the books, and a buyer valuing what he would like to own is not independent. If you require one, say so and we will refer you to appraisers who do that work. Telling you what we see, and what we would pay, carries no charge and no obligation.ion text goes here

  • We state at the outset which books we want and what each is worth to us, and the decision is yours from there. If you would rather move the entire collection in a single transaction, note it on the form: for larger libraries we can often quote the lot, which values the remainder at less per book but leaves you nothing to dispose of.ption text goes here

  • Every submission is answered. An initial read on whether there is anything of interest ordinarily comes back within a few days. A researched, itemized offer on a substantial collection takes longer, because the research is genuine. If you are working against an estate or closing deadline, enter the date on the form and we will tell you plainly whether we can meet it.

  • We do, on anything we have agreed to purchase. We provide instructions for packing books so they survive the journey; the most common damage we see is a bumped corner from a carton an inch too large.

  • Begin wide: the shelves as they stand, with the spines readable. For anything promising we will request four specific images: the title page, the copyright page, the front of the jacket, and the inside front flap where the price is printed. That flap is frequently the entire question. Daylight, no flash, and please do not stack the books to photograph them.

  • Yes! Single books are welcome, and it is frequently a single book that turns out to matter.

  • That is entirely fine, and there is no charge. Select “just curious” on the form. You will not be followed up with, and if you decide to keep the book, we have done our job.escription

Submit a collection

Nothing below needs to be exact. Best estimates are useful, and “I don’t know” is a legitimate answer that counts against nothing.

Every submission is read and every submission is answered. Your information is not shared, sold, or added to a mailing list unless you ask to join one.

If you would rather not use a form, write to thequillandparchmentbooks@gmail.com and tell us what you have. Photographs of the shelves, attached, are the fastest start.