Mt. Lebanon Library vintage book sale draws dozens
Lisa Keller, of Mt. Lebanon, picked up nearly a dozen “Nancy Drew” mystery books for her unborn daughter.
Joan Mancuso, of Baldwin, holds one of the many history books she bought Sept. 27.
After just an hour, nearly a quarter of all the books on display were sold.
Within the first hour of Mt. Lebanon Library’s “Book Cellar” vintage book sale, nearly a quarter of the 300 donated books dating back to 1790 were sold.
The Sept. 27 sale featured rare items like an original edition of “Ovid,” and a 16-volume set of “The Book of The One Thousand Nights and a Night” (Arabian Nights) from 1885 that sold for $300.
“Arabian Nights was blacklisted and wasn’t allowed to be sold in many stores and libraries when it was originally published. It had beheadings, and America couldn’t be reading about that kind of scandalous stuff at the time,” organizer David McKibben said.
Most came for familiar titles and themed texts that sold for under $20.
“This ‘Book of the American Indian’ is $5, and all the history books are very reasonable,” Richard Gaetano, of Baldwin, said.
Gaetano had a dozen history tomes, along with Joan Mancuso, who held up her newly purchased two-volume set of Frontier Forts of America for $25.
“Almost all of these books are in beautiful condition. It’s so fun to find them in such shape. And I go for these kind of history texts because they tell it as history unfolded, not looking back at it,” Mancuso said.
Jennifer Beno, from Oakdale, was looking for classics, and picked up “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for $2.
Lisa Keller, from Mt. Lebanon, was prepping for memory lane as well as a nursery.
“These ‘Nancy Drew’ mystery books are a dollar a piece, so these will be good for when my daughter is born,” Keller said.
“This library does so much when it comes to children, so for me it’s easy to come down here to support them as well as getting original material from 1950 or before.”
McKibben said this was the first time such a large sale has happened in the six-year history of the Book Cellar, aside from an auction in 2007.
“We raised over $1,000, and so long as we keep getting donations and people keep buying them as they are now, we’ll do more vintage sales in the future.”