The Smith College Club volunteers know what it takes to sell their annual haul of 50,000 used books: pale yellow cotton aprons, sweat shirts and very sensible shoes. Its annual three-day literary stampede kicks off today when the doors burst open at the Towson Armory and scores of first-edition hungry readers storm the tables.
This isn't a book sale for people who want to hang out and sip cafe mocha. This is the stock exchange floor of frenzied book buying, where the money you'd normally spend on one hardcover book buys three, maybe four titles, a little worn, occasionally stuffed with post cards from Bar Harbor, letters or newspaper clippings left behind by the previous owner, generally somebody who lived not too far from the Roland Park Water Tower, has a Tuxedo telephone number and went to a school where the study of Latin and French was required.
"In North Baltimore you have a lot of people who buy good books and then move to Broadmead or Roland Park Place," said former Goucher College President Rhoda Dorsey, who chairs the event. "They donate everything to us."
In the past, the club members priced their wares at what books cost in the year they graduated from Smith, the Northampton, Mass., college whose Baltimore alumnae chapter has been holding this annual used-book sale for 41 years. The money raised will help send a couple Baltimoreans to the school on scholarship. Over the years, the book romp has raised a tidy endowment -- $600,000.
Alas, the days of the incredible $2 bargains are over -- well, almost -- everything reduces to half price on Sunday afternoon, then, come Sunday evening, it's all you can carry for $2. This year the prices range roughly from 50 cents to around $20. Most are $3 to $5.
"The prices have gone up. They have to," said Marilyn Braiterman, a volunteer who is also a professional book appraiser. "The cost of college tuition has gone up, too."
This weekend's annual sale is one of the high points of the local book accumulators' calendars.
Some of this year's more interesting titles are the 1914 Pillsbury Cookbook, J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" (poor condition but illustrations by Arthur Rackham); and "By the Light of the Study Lamp," a Dana Girls mystery book. Each of these requires a silent-auction bid.
History -- at three and a half long tables, 120 cartons -- weighs in as this year's largest category. There's a ton of cookbooks, too, "Lutheran Favorites" to "Cape Cod Cooking." Used mysteries are also well stocked, as is fine art -- a local antiques appraiser donated his library.
"We do this to make money, but it's also a public service to readers. It's a way of redistributing really good books," said Joan Griffith, a longtime Smith College Club worker whose Roland Park house is, not surprisingly, full of books.
Griffith loves mining the year's loot for unusual finds, like a cheap 1950s paperback reprint of Anton Chekhov's "The Kiss and the Devil" ($12).
"Look at the cover art. It's so lurid," she said. For those who want 1940s paperbacks without lurid covers, there's a Dell copy of "Tugboat Annie." It's marked $6.
While the Towson Armory bustles with book-buying frenzy this weekend, the club's members spend much of the rest of the year at a book sorting warehouse they rent off Falls Road. There, at posted hours, donors drop off their libraries and literary cast-offs.
"There was one man who brought the same box of books in three times. He just couldn't part with them," Dorsey said. "Another man brought in textbooks, which we don't accept. I told him we'd just throw them away. He said, 'Take them. I can't bear to do it.' "
Book sale
The Smith College Club Used Book Sale, Towson Armory, Chesapeake and Washington avenues
Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. today; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow; noon to 8 p.m. Sunday
Admission: $5 the first hour today, after that free
Books: On Sunday, all books drop to half price noon to 5 p.m.; from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., all the books you can carry for $2 Pub Date: 3/26/99