A treasure of a book sale

10 June 2008

They’ve got so many books for sale, book lovers are being asked to Dig Up A Bargain. Come Black Friday, June 13, there will be a lot of digging up to do at the Pioneer Leisure Centre

But the first digging up is done for you, bibliophiles. Staff at the Christchurch City Libraries spent hours weeding the massive collection at their 20 libraries and shunting off stacks of cancelled stock and has-beens as well as some fairly recent tomes to the Christchurch City Council Bindery at Linwood.

There, Lindsay Dell and his band of buccaneers did their share of burrowing, sorting out like topics, pricing individual items and caching them in cartons. At last count, 50,000 items and still counting.

“It is a virtual treasure trove,” says Mr Dell, Transport & Maintenance Team Leader at the Bindery. The treasure will remain buried deep in a warehouse in Linwood until it is shifted to the Pioneer Leisure Centre this week.

The treasure will be in cartons, lined on tables and grouped according to interest – Art and Craft, Home & Garden, Sports and a miscellaneous collection titled Mixed Gems. While it will be easy digging for the book lovers, it always turns out to be a bit of a race for the best titles.

“It will be a hunt,” says Mr Dell, a bookworm himself. And smiles as he recollects the previous book sales where the jostling crowd ransacked the cartons. Priced from 50 cents to $3, the titles are a steal.

The Annual Book Sale is a favourite of Mr Dell’s, something he has loved doing for the past four years of the Book Sales’ 21 year history. Picture caption:

Plundered Pleasure: Library staff member Andrew Youngson digging up a perusable treasure See picture.

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