I love books, like many other college students do. So it’s hurt to have them given away for any reason.  For years, campus bookstores across the United States have practiced “cash for books” program, where they buy back your books for a small fraction of the cost you paid initially, then turn around and re-sell them for ten times higher. I had text books that I paid a couple hundreds of dollars each at the beginning of each semester. And I usually sold them back to the bookstore for like average $20 each. That hurt, because I always thought the books were worth a lot more. So sometimes I decided to keep certain books instead of selling them away.

But what hurt me even more is that, after several years without even touching the books, I finally had to throw them in the dumpster because I ran out of storage! You know what I mean, 5 of them would have given me $100, and a hundred bucks are very helpful at this time. “Why don’t you sell them now?” You may ask. Sure, for how much? It’s practically nothing! Forgive me if you believe otherwise, but I believe that modern books don’t appreciate (in value) over time. Remember you might have a nice text book on Pascal (an “ancient” edition of a computer language), imagine if you try to sell it on eBay now. Well, you may put it in “antique” section, but I doubt if anyone bid on it.

My speculation is, unless your old books are linked to some famous people, like books that were read by George Washington or something like that, time will make them more like trash than any treasure. The truth is, useful information just gets outdated and becomes not so useful anymore.

As you can see, I learned my lesson from all this used book stuff, that I only keep things I strongly believe will appreciate in value. For example, precious metals such as gold or silver, they’re very likely to appreciate in value or at least remain valuable for a long time. The reason is that their supply is limited, you can’t keep producing them without recycling the old materials. Anything that don’t seem to retain value over time, AND, if you can sell them now for money, just sell them! Money in the bank is always more useful than any stuff that you don’t use.

My neighbor is an interesting (and weird) guy. He collects all the junk CD’s that hit his mailbox. You know, the stuffs from AOL, MSN or some junkie MLM people trying to hook you up for a quick buck. I once asked him what for, he said “some day I’ll sell them for millions!” I was laughing, but thought “yeah right, keep on dreaming buddy…” Oh well, you’ll never know, I would be damned if he’d turn out to be right. But at least he got a dream!

But the way I see it, even CD’s that used to be a hot trend now seem to lose steam over flash drives or other mass storage devices. I don’t see how used CD can suddenly be sold for good money, or any money at all.