So, I have seen people in used book stores and thrift shops scanning the barcodes of nearly every book there, buying some, putting others back on the shelf. Today, I saw one such guy. He had a device that looked like a small cell phone, but thicker and squatter. He had 20+ books in his cart.

What, precisely, is the purpose of this?

I assume it has to do with re-selling them on eBay or some such place. I wondered if he had a list of desirable books that were worth more than the listed price and was looking to re-sell them.

Perhaps he is working for the competition. Every large retailer checks the prices of the competition.

I think this is what they're doing.

https://fbafaq.com/best-book-s...nline%20marketplaces.

quote:

Originally posted by UTsig:
I think this is what they're doing.

https://fbafaq.com/best-book-s...nline%20marketplaces.

Cool, thanks for the info. I knew somebody here would know.

quote:

Originally posted by UTsig:
I think this is what they're doing.

https://fbafaq.com/best-book-s...nline%20marketplaces.

My first thought was this.

If you are reselling books, scanning the bar code is much faster than title, date, version, etc to determine current selling price.

I knew of a few people who did this in the college days. They'd buy up everyone's text books at the end of the semester for higher than what the college book store would pay and then, turn around and resell them to the next class for less than what the store would sell the used book(s) for.

Eventually the college prohibited advertising of buying/selling of books on the local billboards. When the school tried to ban private buying and sales of text books on campus - it was game on for all the student.