Nearly all of this city's secondhand stock sits along one road. Pages Past sits at 1837 Spring Garden, The Second Hand Book at 908, roughly a mile of the same road between them, and Unfettered Books is a third of a mile off the center of downtown on South Davie. North-northwest of that, Lawndale Drive gives you a church garage that opens three or four weekends a year. Then Guilford County spreads out: Jamestown at ten miles southwest for a town library and a storefront on West Main, and High Point at fourteen for a Friends section the library keeps stocked all year. Where an entry below stands outside Greensboro proper, its first sentence tells you so.
Sort out how every counter handles a box of stock before loading the car, because a single address in this guide hands over money. Pages Past buys, narrowly, and its taste runs to North Caroliniana, Civil War, old leather and theology. BookLOVE in Jamestown trades instead — return a finished new title and a fifth of its cover price lands on account toward secondhand copies. Unfettered says a trade scheme is coming and has not opened it. The rest are donation channels with rules — St. Francis takes five boxes per appointment and checks them in front of you, the Jamestown library refuses textbooks and encyclopedias outright.
Two dates age an older Greensboro list. The first is April 2024: the chain's own move notice puts the final Greensboro trading day at Sunday, April 7 of that year and the Mebane opening twelve days after it, which is why the high-volume buyer this city used to have is now 29 miles east. The second is November 2025, when Julie Wade opened The Second Hand Book — anything written before that misses half of Spring Garden, and anything written before the summer of 2026 misses Unfettered downtown as well. One more sorting rule: Scuppernong on South Elm is the new-book store, not a secondhand one, and roundups that lead with it are answering a different question.
Used bookstoresPages Past-Used & Rare Books
1837 Spring Garden St, Greensboro, NC 27403
One narrow room a few blocks west of the UNCG campus, where Roger March has been the sole proprietor since 1996 and where The Assembly found him in December 2025 handling a leather-bound German manuscript penned with the year 1625 in red ink at the front. His own site puts the room at 10,000 to 15,000 volumes, says only about a fifth of the stock is listed on its online venues, and asks you to phone 336-574-1877 before driving over, since he sometimes runs the day's shipping to the post office himself. He told that reporter roughly three quarters of the business now happens online and that another 50,000 volumes sit uncataloged in the unit next door. He does buy — the site says it is always interested in quality copies graded very good or above — and the same page, stamped Updated 9/20/2025, was still carrying the 29th Anniversary sale of October 31 to November 2, 2025, at 30 to 50 percent off.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pmWebsite Used bookstoresThe Second Hand Book
908 Spring Garden St, Greensboro, NC 27403
Julie Wade opened this one in November 2025, sharing a building with ReCycles Bike Shop about a mile east of Pages Past, after years of a giveaway bookmobile called Snake, Rabbit, and Snail and, from 2021, a stall at local craft fairs and markets. She told The Assembly that most of what she carries lands between $3 and $12, that a rare Bluest Eye in the glass case at $40 is the exception, and that she buys on instinct: mass-market horror with illustrated covers, a run of zines, oddities picked up at sales. Four published schedules disagree about when the door is unlocked, so treat any one of them as a starting point rather than a promise — The Assembly printed a Wednesday-to-Friday window of noon until 4pm, Greensboro Insider adds some Saturdays, her own bio at @akadirtybooks gives Wednesday noon to 6pm and then noon to 4pm on Thursday and Friday, and Greensboro Daily Photo wrote on June 30, 2026 that the place is usually open mid-day Wednesday through Saturday. That last piece covered a pop-up she staged from her personal collection, which is how this store announces itself; reach her at [email protected] or as @akadirtybooks.
Friends of the Library sale shelvesFriends of the High Point Public Library Book Sale
901 N Main St, High Point, NC 27262
High Point, fourteen miles southwest, is where the volunteers keep a shelf going year-round: the Friends group sorts donated stock every month and keeps a permanent sale section on the library's first floor, shoppable through every hour the building itself trades. Three larger sales break up the year, and the Friends page names October 23 and 24, 2026 for the next; Yes! Weekly wrote up the equivalent event on October 17 and 18, 2025. The group has run since 1984 and puts what it hands over to the library at roughly $20,000 a year. Look at the closing list before committing to the drive: the library publishes its 2026 shutdown dates, November 22 for the holiday parade among them.
Hours : Library hours: Mon–Thu 9am–8pm, Fri–Sat 9am–6pm, Sun 1:30pm–5:30pmWebsite Church outreach book saleSt. Francis Outreach Book Sale
3506 Lawndale Dr, Greensboro, NC 27408
Up Lawndale Drive, a three-and-a-half-mile run north-northwest of the city center, at the Episcopal church there, whose own page says it has hosted a spring used book sale for over six decades and now spreads three to four sales a year across a renovated Book Garage rather than staging a single one. The sale's own social accounts gave notice on August 20, 2026: the fall edition would run September 17 to 19, a large-print fiction haul among the sorted donations, and the same feeds had taken the spring edition through May 14 to 16, 2026, closing at half price on the Saturday. Modern fiction, children's and nonfiction are the standing categories alongside material the volunteers flag as cool and collectible, with proceeds routed through parish outreach to Greensboro Urban Ministry and others. Resellers get an explicit invitation here: the church asks anyone after bulk volumes wholesale, or holding a larger collection, to get in touch directly instead of waiting in line on the morning.
Hours : Thu–Fri September 17–18, 2026 9am–6pm; Sat September 19, 2026 9am–2pmWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Greensboro?
Start with the volunteer shelves. The Friends of the High Point Public Library run a standing sale section at 901 N Main Street, restocked from donations sorted every month, and it stays open as long as the building does, which in 2026 means an 8pm close early in the week, 6pm once Friday arrives, and no Sunday opening before 1:30pm. The Jamestown Public Library sells donated stock year-round at 200 W Main Street and posted Choice Book Sale mornings for September 12 and 19, 2026, 10am until 1pm, payable in cash or by check. St. Francis Episcopal on Lawndale Drive opens its Book Garage three or four times annually, and the May 14 to 16, 2026 edition ended at 50 percent off on its final day. In the paid shops, Julie Wade told The Assembly in December 2025 that most of The Second Hand Book falls between $3 and $12.
Where do I sell used books in Greensboro?
Honestly, barely anywhere inside the city. Pages Past at 1837 Spring Garden Street is the one counter that pays, and its own site restricts that to well-kept copies inside the categories it actually stocks. BookLOVE in Jamestown trades rather than pays, crediting 20 percent of a printed price toward used titles, and Unfettered Books said in September 2026 that its own trade program had yet to begin. For volume, the nearest real buyer is McKAY's, 29 miles east in Mebane or 30 miles west in Winston-Salem, where you fill a lobby tote, take an order number and accept a non-negotiable offer with ID in hand. Triage before either drive: a single frame taking in the whole row is all BiblioScan needs, since it works straight off the spines and hands back what each title resells for, so the keep pile and the trade pile separate themselves before a box is packed.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Greensboro?
There is no single Guilford County date, and Greensboro proper is the odd one out. Central Library at 219 North Church Street once housed a Booklovers Shop run by the city's own Friends group, but that organization's web address no longer resolves and the library site now points only to its Foundation, so the sale to plan around inside Greensboro is a church one: St. Francis Episcopal, 3506 Lawndale Drive, whose own social accounts set the fall edition for September 17 to 19, 2026 after taking the spring through May 14 to 16. The county's Friends groups sit either side of it. High Point has its next large sale down for October 23 and 24, 2026, one of three it holds annually, alongside the permanent shelf it keeps open all year. Jamestown's Friends held their ninth annual sale over February 19, 20 and 21, 2026 according to the Jamestown News.
Which day is best for book hunting in Greensboro?
Saturday, with one caveat. Pages Past keeps 10am to 6pm six days a week and locks up on Sunday, BookLOVE runs 11am to 6pm Wednesday through Sunday, and the High Point shelf follows a library that closes at 6pm on Saturday and does not open until 1:30pm Sunday — so a Saturday takes in Spring Garden, Jamestown and High Point in one loop. The caveat is Jamestown's town library, which shuts at 1pm on Saturdays, so put it first. Unfettered opens at noon Wednesday through Saturday and at 11am on Sunday, which makes Sunday afternoon a downtown-only proposition. And The Second Hand Book is the wildcard: its published schedules do not agree past a midweek noon opening, so message the shop rather than betting an afternoon on it.