Collecting Children's Books

Here it is, at long last! Hundreds of color illustrations, thousands of listings, in hardcover.

We checked the ranking on Amazon.com. In the sublists, we actually cracked the top 10 in one category: Paper Ephemera.

Encyclopedia of Collectible Children's Books was sitting at the #5 spot. Who knows how high or how low it will go next week. But for now, we are feeling euphoric about ephemera.

You can check out the rankings and other information about the Encyclopedia at Amazon.com

Our five titles on book collecting:
Collector’s Guide to Children’s Books, 1850-1950, Vol 1, 1997
Collector’s Guide to Children’s Books, 1850-1950, Vol 2, 1999
Collector’s Guide to Children’s Books, 1950-1975, Vol 3, 2000
Boys’ and Girls’ Book Series, Real Word Adventures, 2002
Encyclopedia of Collectible Children’s Books, 2008

Readers of our first four books could find a handy list of links in the back of the books. We'd update these lists on a page we kept stored at AOL. Sadly, AOL ate our webpage in a change of service (sort like the dog eating your homework!). However, we still have a copy of the links. Here they are again. And feel free to send us your suggestions for new links.

Places to Buy or Sell Books

Full explanation of these sites can be found in the earlier editions of the Collector's Guide to Children's Books
Comments refer to information not available at the time of publication.

ABE: www.abebooks.com
One of the oldest and most stable of the bookselling sites. The fees to sellers keep increasing, making it less bargain-friendly than before, but it still has a huge inventory to pick through.

Alibris: www.alibris.com
We both sell and buy books through this site -- link on the sidebar.

Amazon Auctions, Marketplace and Zshops:
Never quite caught up with Ebay or the bookselling sites.Most sellers now list their best newer stuff through the Amazon Marketplace and their antiquarian books of value through one of the other book sites on this list.

Biblio: www.biblio.com
This site specializes in hard-to-find books and represents more than 2,200 independent bookstores worldwide.

Bibliocity:
This site was bought by Alibris and simply leads to the Alibris page listed above.

Bibliofind:
This site was bought by Amazon.com and was closed by them in May 2001.

Bookfinder: www.bookfinder.com
If you can't find what you're looking for, try going straight to some of the other sites listed here. Bookfinder tends to search only the most recent additions and often misses books. Leave want lists on the sales sites to improve your chances of finding a book.

Book Sales (library and nonprofit): changed to www.booksalefinder.com

Choosebooks: www.choosebooks.com

Ebay: www.ebay.com
We still buy books every now and then on this auction site and find it best for reading copies, where condition description doesn't really matter.

Suzanne & Truman Price: oldchildrensbooks.com
These Oregon dealers spice up their site with additional information about authors and illustrators.
We've adored their printed catalog for years!

Pacific Book Auction Galleries: www.pacificbook.com

Fan Clubs or Just Big Fans
Bayport Gazette: www.bayportgazette.com
Betsy-Tacy Society: www.betsy-tacysociety.org
Biggles: www.biggles.au.com
Horatio Alger Society: www.ihot.com/~has
International Wizard of Oz Club: www.ozclub.org
Judy Bolton: www.judybolton.com
Laura Ingells Wilder: www.liwms.com
Stratemeyer Syndicate: www.stratemeyer.net
Bayport Gazette: www.bayportgazette.com

Magazines
Firsts: www.firsts.com
Fine Books and Collections (formerly OP): www.finebooksmagazine.com

Martha's Kidlit: Sadly, the print edition of Martha's KidLit Newsletter ceased publication December 2002 and the site closed in 2003.