Online bookseller Sally Bosley knew the etiquette for saving her spot at the Friends of the Arlington County Public Library book sale: 24 hours before the sale began, she placed a cardboard box affixed with an explanatory note as her placeholder. The next day it was still there and she stood third in line.
The twice-annual sale at the Central branch in Ballston, held since 1976, draws that sort of dedication and planning. Shoppers lined up hours before the opening, in hopes of getting first crack at the best books there. It’s well regarded among two types of book lovers: readers and resellers.
"It’s a bit pricier than others," said Bosley, who said it was worth the drive from Cleveland to supply her online business. "But it’s large and is stocked with unusual titles."
Friends President Sandy Flourance also noted the sale’s value to book buyers, even when they’re charged $15 a head to enter on Thursday’s Members Only Night. "We have such good prices. We have a reputation now: it’s worth it to become a member and come in on preview night."
Bosley wasn’t waiting alone. By 5:28, when the gate was opened to begin the four-day sale, almost 200 people, armed with wheeled carts, stacks of post office mail tubs, and canvas tote bags, were waiting in a line that snaked down two levels of the library parking garage.
They filed in, and immediately fanned out across dozens of categories of books lined up on rolling wooden shelves. Then a flurry of action, mostly silent except for the riffle of pages and the sound of books being pulled and slapped onto selection piles, filled the area in a muted frenzy. Heads turned at right angles to scan the spines, buyers raced from shelf to shelf to out-acquire those next to them, and the more ambitious shoppers — many of them professionals on the hunt for acquisitions — swept up entire rows by the armload, depositing them in stacks in corners for later investigation.

VOLUNTEERS HAD prepared for six months for that moment, first having to comb through 120,000 donated items. Holes in the library collection were filled first. Mildewed books, old medical texts, and outdated reference books were tossed. Also out: computer manuals from the 1980s — though Flourance acknowledged that the value of those computer manuals might eventually come full circle and age into collectibility.
The rest were priced at about 25 percent of the going online rate. About 70-80,000 books, CDs and movies (including a small, mostly disregarded collection of Betamax tapes) made it through to the sale.
The results were as varied as the tastes of the public that donated them. Browsers could pick up "The Art of Walt Disney" ($10), head to the math section for "Lectures on Differential Geometry" ($5), buy a "Complete Idiots’ Guide to Pool and Billiards" ($2), or track "Prairie Progress in West Central South Dakota" ($28). Bill Clinton’s autobiographical "My Life" ($3) rested just inches from "Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years" ($2). The six-volume "Plan for New York City" ($100) awaited a buyer, as did 17 identical softcover copies of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" ($1 each).
Kaspar Bourki picked up a circa-1915 volume on goldfish management techniques for under $5, which he’ll post online. "I figure there’s enough goldfish lovers in the world that someone might want to buy it," he said.
The most expensive item volunteers recall ever selling: a yearbook from an early-70s Miami Dolphins Super Bowl winning team, signed by players and fetching over $300.
The Arlington sale isn’t the largest (the annual St. Louis YMCA sale offers over a million items for sale), the oldest (Redding, Connecticut’s "Mark Twain Library" has hosted a sale for the past half-century), or the most unusual (the Long Island sea village of Montauk weighs books on a fish scale and charges 99 cents a pound). But it is notable for the quality of its offerings.
Flourance explained that the offerings are donated by a literate, highly educated local population, which is highly mobile and leaves plenty of books behind. A 2008 ranking of "America’s Most Literate Cities" placed Washington third, behind Seattle and Minneapolis.

"THE BEST DESCRIPTION of this is: Treasure Hunt," said Tacey Battley, who was on the lookout for books for friends and family, and native Americana and embroidery books for herself.
Kyung Kim hunted for books for her three children. Working from a neatly typed list of over 50 books, she’d put a priority on the works of Roald Dahl, Beverly Cleary, and the Spiderwick Chronicles series. She’d found about 20 so far, and at between 50 cents and $2 each, she was stocking her children’s library inexpensively.
Dealers occupy the other end of the spectrum. Many of them came armed with handheld barcode scanners that instantly display online sales information, and disregarded front covers and titles in favor of back covers and ISBN numbers to beep at a rapid clip.
"Us old-timers, we know books," said Bob Nudelman, a 20-year dealer specializing in Biblical studies, theology, and ancient history. "But a lot of these people with the scanners don’t even know what they’re looking at."
"There’s no question the scanners have increased the number of people going to these sales and selling online," said Tom Oram, co-owner of Booksalefinder.com, which tracks and advertises used book sales around the country. He says some libraries welcome the dealers and scanning devices, while others view the sales as community events for readers only.
He also says that some book scouts, in the race to acquire the best material, can get a bit aggressive.
"There’s some confrontational stuff out there. Some accept the professionals, with the rule: ‘You can’t make our workers cry.’"
Flourance, for her part, has no problem with the pros. "Their money is just as good, and they end up spending more than the average buyer. We don’t want the books to go to waste and we can’t store them all."

AFTER FOUR DAYS, an estimated $84,000 had been raised for the library — slightly higher than the return on the sale last spring — which will pay for library materials, a reading program for children, and honoraria to visiting authors.
Sally Bosley did her part to contribute to the total: she packed the back of her SUV with about 400 books, some of which will be shipped to an orphanage in Tanzania and to an inner-city Cleveland reading program. The rest will end up competing for buyers online. Her big find: a hardcover art history volume called "Medicine and Art," which she bought for $8 and posted for close to $100.
"I did well in the Art section," she said, marveling at her luck against more assertive buyers. "I guess someone just missed it."
Soon the preparations will resume for the next sale in April, and the sorting, online searching, pricing, boxing and storage will occupy the volunteers all over again.
"One of the characteristics of being a librarian is a love of categorization," said Flourance. "Obviously, people who do this love books."