Bakersfield's secondhand trade clusters around the civic center, and the county library carries it outward. Four of the eight addresses below lie roughly a mile or less from City Hall on Truxtun Avenue: the Beale Memorial Library, where the county library's Friends group holds its big weekend sales, the Assistance League's Bargain Box a block or two north on Q Street, the BookHounds warehouse up L Street and the Junk-Atique Outlet over on 21st Street. Two more branch libraries carry the hunt to Oildale in the north and Ming Avenue out west, while the SPCA on Gibson Street and the swap meet at the fairgrounds round out the map, the first a once-a-year sale and the second a market its operator opens four days a week.
Decide early what the trip is for, because this is a town for buying books much more than for selling them. BookHounds alone, among the places on this page, pays for books, and its website and a July 2026 Instagram post give different lists of what it takes, so a phone call to the store comes before any loaded trunk. Every other address here depends on gifts: the Friends turn library donations into sale stock, the SPCA collects for its yearly sale, and the two charity thrift shops fund a church's missions and a volunteer league's community programs.
Used bookstoresBookHounds
2710 L St, Bakersfield, CA 93301
A warehouse-style shop on L Street, 0.75 miles north-northeast of City Hall, which by its own description fills more than 2,000 sq ft with books, audiobooks, CDs, DVDs and records, gives children's and YA titles very large sections, and keeps an outdoor sale area where nothing costs over a dollar. The About page sets that patio's bag sale for the closing Saturday of every month, starting at 9am, $3 for whatever fits in a Walmart-size grocery bag, and an Instagram post of March 31, 2026 announced the patio restocked that morning with hundreds of 50-cent to $1 books after the previous Saturday's bag sale. On what it pays for, the store's website and its feed part ways: the website still invites everything except most non-fiction, while a July 25, 2026 post limited buybacks to CDs, DVDs, vinyl, horror, graphic novels, comics and manga until a formal announcement. Its September 22, 2026 post showed a freshly stocked shelf of fall and Halloween children's books and repeated a week with Wednesday and Sunday off.
Hours: Mon–Tue and Thu–Sat 9am–4pm; closed Wed and SunWebsite Friends of the Library saleFriends of the Kern County Library Used Book Sale
Beale Memorial Library, 701 Truxtun Ave, Bakersfield, CA 93301
The headline sale of a Friends group that traces itself to spring 1953 and keeps its main base inside Beale, the county's central library, 0.6 miles east of City Hall along Truxtun Avenue. Its latest weekend fell on October 16 and 17, 2026, which the Kern County Library's Instagram trailed on October 13 with books, DVDs, CDs, puzzles and games for every age, an early hour on the Friday for members and memberships on sale at the entrance; BakersfieldNow reported the same two days. The Friends' page already carries three Beale weekends for 2027, opening in March, and its membership levels, Individual, Family, Patron and Supporter, are what buy that early hour. Beale also figures on the Friends' list of branches with an ongoing sale on site, and on October 21, 2026 the main Friends page gave its August 2027 weekend as the 6th and 7th where an older Friends page still read the 12th and 13th.
Hours: Next sale: Fri Mar 12, 2027, 11am–5:30pm; Sat Mar 13, 2027, 10am–3:30pmWebsite Friends of the Library saleSouthwest Branch Library
Southwest Branch Library, 8301 Ming Ave, Bakersfield, CA 93311
Out on Ming Avenue, 4.8 miles west-southwest of downtown, a branch whose affiliated Friends group, as the Friends tell it, runs major sales several times a year on top of a continuing sale on the premises. Its fall 2026 edition stretched from a members-only Thursday, September 10, through general sale days on the 11th and 12th to a half-price Monday on the 14th and a closing Tuesday on the 15th, when stock went at $5 per bag and $10 per box. The county library's Instagram flagged those bag and box days as a new feature in a post of September 7, 2026. The Friends' calendar showed no further Southwest date on October 21, 2026, so between events the branch is simply one of the libraries on their ongoing-sale list.
Hours: Library hours: Mon–Thu 10am–7pm, Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 10am–4pm; closed SunWebsite Charity book saleBakersfield SPCA Annual Book Sale
3000 Gibson St, Bakersfield, CA 93308
Outside the incorporated city, on Kern County land 2 miles west-northwest from City Hall, the Bakersfield SPCA fills its Gibson Street site with a sale its own flier labels annual. The 2026 edition ran from April 25 to May 23, and The Bakersfield Californian's preview of April 21, 2026 counted upward of 20,000 donated books, roughly 70 percent of them hardcover, plus vinyl and puzzles, with no early picking, no stock held back and no cap on the haul any one shopper carried away. Cash and cards were accepted, with proceeds going to the care of homeless animals in Kern County. The 2026 sale page invited book donations at the SPCA office during business hours, and the site named no 2027 dates on October 21, 2026.
Hours: Last documented: April 25–May 23, 2026, Wed–Fri 11am–4:30pm, Sat–Sun 11am–3pmWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Bakersfield?
Start on the BookHounds patio, where everything outside goes for a dollar or less, and on the final Saturday of the month the store fills a grocery bag of it for $3 from opening time. After that, look to the library Friends, who list ongoing sales of donated stock at Beale, Southwest and Rathbun among their Bakersfield branches, and whose September 2026 sale at Southwest added bag-and-box pricing on its final day. The SPCA's annual sale on Gibson Street, whose dates go up on the shelter's website, is the other volume buy, and the Bargain Box and Junk-Atique Outlet both keep book sections inside their thrift floors.
Where do I sell used books in Bakersfield?
Selling happens at BookHounds on L Street, and it works by drop-off: label every bag or box with your name, leave no more than four per visit during opening hours, and payment follows within two weeks by Zelle, Venmo or PayPal, or by check if you supply a stamped envelope. The website also describes weekday appointments between 8am and 11am, booked by leaving a message on 661-428-7264, for larger or special collections such as Easton Press, Franklin, leather-bound sets, vinyl or current textbooks. Its July 2026 Instagram post cut buying back to discs, records, horror and illustrated formats, so ask on that line what is being taken before loading up. Before boxing anything, point BiblioScan at each shelf for a single photo, and the spines it recognizes come back with resale prices attached, so the titles that earn more on eBay than at a counter sort themselves out from the rest.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Bakersfield?
The big ones are two-day events at Beale Memorial Library downtown, which the Friends say happen several times a year, with members admitted during the first hour. Dates appear on the Friends' section of kerncountylibrary.org, and where an older Friends page disagrees with it, leave a message on the group's line at 661-868-0796 before planning around a date. Southwest Branch on Ming Avenue is the other Bakersfield library the Friends single out for these larger events, while the Rathbun branch in Oildale has run its own themed sale through a week of regular opening hours.
Which day is best for book hunting in Bakersfield?
Saturday covers the most ground: BookHounds, the three library branches, the Junk-Atique Outlet and the fairgrounds swap meet are all open, and the month's final Saturday adds the BookHounds patio bag sale. Weekdays suit the libraries too, though Rathbun stays shut on Mondays and BookHounds closes every Wednesday. Sunday leaves little: of the stops above, only the swap meet publishes Sunday times, plus the SPCA sale on the weekends it runs.