Before you take your books to the charity shop...

[Humanist]

Just something to think about in these times of high street shop closures.

At first thought, it seems like a good, ethical thing to do to drop your unwanted books off at a charity shop. What you might not realise is that you may be contributing to the closure of the good old fashioned second hand book store by doing this.

The charity shop gets its stock for nothing. It has lower business rates than other shops and the staff are mostly volunteers. The outlay of the charity shop is very low.

The second hand bookshop has to buy its stock of books, has full business rates to pay, and has to pay staff at least the minimum wage.

My wife and I both work for her Dad in his antiquarian bookshop in our town. He has ran this shop for about 40 years. Next door is a charity shop. They have quite a large book section, and they sell the books at 2 for a pound. In the bookshop, this would result in negative profits.

People sometimes come into the bookshop and offer to sell us bags of books. Often, they are not satisfied with our offer of the value of the books. They sometimes turn this down and opt to go and give them to the charity shop next door instead, free of charge.

That's their choice of course, and they do it because they believe that they are doing their bit for the community by contributing to the charity. But in some ways they are actually contributing to the death of the high street shops.

Our high street is slowly dying. Speciality shops are closing down due to internet sales, giant supermarkets selling items cheaper and councils charging extortionate monthly business rates. Charity shops are, however, thriving. There are 6 of them in our small town.

Our main shopping street now consists mainly of charity shops, mobile phone shops and opticians. There is very little to tempt shoppers out into the street. Small, interesting shops are now few and far between.

Is this really what we want our shopping areas to look like?

Another thing about charity shops is the possibility that the volunteers who work there might 'cherry pick' your items before they even reach the shelves and make money for the charity. This is not a hollow accusation - we share the same building as them and can sometimes hear them discussing this in the sorting room through the thin walls!

So before you take anything to a charity shop, (particularly books!), just take a little time to think outside the box. Is it really the best thing to do?

[Robert]

Some points to ponder.

Having done work for one very large charity and a few smaller ones, I have to say I am slightly worried about how donations are used, of course that's not to say that charities do fantastic work.

[wendy]

Some points to ponder.

Having done work for one very large charity and a few smaller ones, I have to say I am slightly worried about how donations are used, of course that's not to say that charities do fantastic work.

I second this entirely. Also having worked, on a voluntary basis for a number of charities and a husband who worked for a charity for 15 years.
I am careful who I give my money to.

[Orfy]

There are many angles to look at this from.
People on low income sometimes can not afford to pay retail prices and rely on charity shops.

[Humanist]

People on low income sometimes can not afford to pay retail prices and rely on charity shops.

Agreed, and there's nothing wrong with buying from charity shops. But it would not be a good situation for anyone if there was nothing else on the street but charity shops!

[Maggie1]

My friend worked for a charity shop and they had a man come in every so often and look at the donations. He valued things and if there was something valuable it went to auction with a reserve if it didn't sell it went back into the shop on sale at a quoted price.
I'm sorry and I might upset a lot of people but if I wanted a certain book I would go to either charity shops or Amazon. I bought a book the other day for a penny plus postage. Its not just books its anything, if I can get it cheaper I would rather do that and spend the extra money I would have spent in a specialist shop on something else.

[Humanist]

I buy most of my books online too. But that's because the type of books I buy are usually way too obscure to ever turn up in a charity shop or second hand bookshop.

[Mrs B]

I don't have a second hand bookshop in any of my local towns so my books either go to chartity shop or bookstall at horse shelter open day.

[saint-spoon]

Our high street is slowly dying. Speciality shops are closing down due to internet sales, giant supermarkets selling items cheaper and councils charging extortionate monthly business rates. Charity shops are, however, thriving. There are 6 of them in our small town.

Our main shopping street now consists mainly of charity shops, mobile phone shops and opticians. There is very little to tempt shoppers out into the street. Small, interesting shops are now few and far between.

Is this really what we want our shopping areas to look like?

Very well said, our high street is almost exclusively estate agents, charity shops, fast food outlets (I include big chain bakery type shops as being fast food outlets) and pound shops. It is not just our local independent book shop that has gone in the past couple of years, our last independent travel agent (two of the others have merged) obviously our woollies went, the cinema, the last independent butcher in the town, the list goes on. What is worse is that many shops just stay shut until they are either opened for a seasonal sell off of low quality rubbish for Christmas or open as yet another charity shop. Without going too far off topic I also think that we have had a problem with dreamers opening up their dream shop when there is no market, a recent one dealing solely in BMX bikes and accessories opened almost next door to an established and thriving bicycle shop who stocked pretty much everything the BMX chap was offering… the outcome of this venture was quite predicable. We also had a shop with only sold catty stuff, that is to say a pet shop aimed solely at cat owners that also sold things like mugs with cats on and statues of cats, it surprisingly last a year or so before it closed.
I think that only growth area is in charity shops, kebab shops, Chinese and Indian takeaways, and vacant properties. The other casualty is our public houses; the free houses are vanishing at an alarming rate, forced out of business by the big conglomerates and sold off to property developers to turn into flats. It is sad but the soul is going out of our town.
Back on subject, we do have a rather good second hand book shop, I do buy stuff from him to take to sea.

[Humanist]

That sounds exactly like my town, saint-spoon. It seems the same thing is happening everywhere. My father-in-Law actually wants to open another bookshop in town, but can't because the rates are too high. The council will not entertain the idea of lowering them. And meanwhile over 40 shops (and counting) lie empty.

[fabindia]

Exactly the same has happened in our town centre. All charity shops and take-aways. We have an excellent little bakery but that's about it.

I generally dislike supermarkets and their out of town location has killed many of our traditional town centre shops. I used to buy all our fruit and veg from our local shop but as trade drifted to the supermarkets, their range and quality went down, so I don't shop there any more. I guess you can't blame the small retailer if the demand isn't there. It becomes a bit of a vicious circle I am afraid.

[Benny&Co]

Certainly something to think about

We don't have a second hand book shop here so all our books (loads as Hubbly reads extremely quickly) goto charity.

Can I just say that I used to volunteer for a charity shop for a good few years. Whilst we did obviously see what donations came in, I used to wait for the manager to price up and then I'd buy for the same price as what they'd sell in the shop for. I'd never dream of 'just taking' things for free!

I got some lovely things in that time and we always used to say I should just have my salary paid direct to them!

[saint-spoon]

I generally dislike supermarkets and their out of town location has killed many of our traditional town centre shops. I used to buy all our fruit and veg from our local shop but as trade drifted to the supermarkets, their range and quality went down, so I don't shop there any more. I guess you can't blame the small retailer if the demand isn't there. It becomes a bit of a vicious circle I am afraid.

we have three supermarkets, son-of-morris, sadsa and weight-rose all within five minute walk of each other in the centre of town and whilst all our butchers have gobe there is still a couple of fruitier shops away from the centre. Pestco are building a huge store 5 miles down the road but I don't think that it'll affect us too much as there is no point driving down a very busy road when the other three are on your doorstep. It might however destroy the neighbouring town's shopping centre.

[Pyrotech]

The problem I have with certain charity shops is they have become too savy as such, probably as a result of the internet, I find nothing wrong with them selling all their books at 50p or what ever, but now, one I know researches every item. and I think it does the knowledgeable specialist out of his living. Prices do not reflect any more the disparity in rates paid by business and charities.

Maybe a few "partnerships" might work, the charity shop uses the specialist to preview the bulk, and any specialist/valuable items are exchanged at fair TRADE Price. both win possibly.

[Mo]

Oh overheard 2 secondhand book dealers chatting in a charity shop about which other charity shops they'd swept that day. No bargains to be had any more, the dealers get them and put the prices up. So it's better for the charity to use someone who knows their stuff to do the pricing.