Where to buy used books in Long Beach

Updated 9/3/2026

Three of the twelve entries below sit inside Long Beach itself, at the south end of Los Angeles County in California, and all three are within six miles of the water — a design bookstore downtown on Long Beach Boulevard, the Friends' honor-box room in the main library a few blocks west of it, and a general secondhand shop out in the Parkview Village triangle near Carson and Bellflower — while a fourth is barely over the line, since Planet Books stands in Signal Hill, the small city that Long Beach wraps around on every side. After those you are driving: north into Lakewood, east to Cerritos, or west along the coast into the South Bay and up onto the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Measured from the downtown shoreline, the nearest of those western stops is just under ten miles out and the furthest is past twelve.

What makes this map unusual is that the volume trade is institutional rather than commercial. Not one of the four California branches Half Price Books advertises sits anywhere near this end of the state — Citrus Heights, Concord, Dublin and Fremont — which leaves the Book-Off counter at Lakewood Center as the single fixed-grid cash buyer on this page. Eight of the twelve entries belong to Friends of the Library groups, staffed by volunteers drawn from six separate public library systems: the City of Long Beach, LA County in Lakewood, and the city libraries of Torrance, Redondo Beach and Cerritos, plus the Palos Verdes Library District. Cash is the norm in those rooms, several of them are unattended honor boxes, and every one prices on what came through the donation door rather than on what a title is worth.

Anything written about this trade before 2025 needs re-checking, because the local map keeps moving. Acres of Books shut in 2008, and that is the marker the Long Beach Post reached for again on May 7, 2024 when it reported that Gatsby Books, near Spring and Bellflower, was closing after fourteen years and selling off even the shelving. Across the harbor in San Pedro, Sunken City Books — which had called itself the first bookstore to return to the town after its famous sellers shut in the 2010s — has had its Instagram bio cut back to a single line saying it is closed, and the Friends of Cabrillo Marine Aquarium ran a pop-up in the empty room, announcing on March 6, 2026 that they were extending it through the rest of April to clear the books left behind. Planet Books, meanwhile, spent April 2026 hauling its entire stock to a former furniture store on Redondo Avenue.

Spot map

The best spots

Used bookstores

Planet Books

1819 Redondo Ave, Signal Hill, CA 90755

Signal Hill is its own municipality, ringed on every side by Long Beach, and this is where the shop landed: the Long Beach Post spent moving day with the crew on April 15, 2026, watching 150 tons of books and magazines come out of the 4,000-square-foot warehouse they had worked since 2020. Owner James Rappaport and manager Argyl Houser told the paper the new room runs about 600 square feet larger at twice the rent, with art books going to the front, specialty vintage to the back left, leatherbound classics into the windowed corner, and the rarest material — until then scattered over five spots — pulled into one glass case. Its own reopening announcement gives the address as 1819 Redondo Avenue and the week as 11am to 7pm every day, while 562-985-3154 is the number the Long Beach Watchdog printed in its April 9, 2026 appeal for packing volunteers. Open since 1998, it keeps posting what has just arrived: Philip K. Dick paperbacks carrying covers from the UK, over 200 natural history titles in one go, an Emmett Dalton memoir from 1931 signed the year it was printed.

Hours : Daily 11am–7pmWebsite

Used bookstores

Once Read Books

5422 E Village Rd, Long Beach, CA 90808

On the corner of Village Road and Viking Way, in the Parkview Village triangle a short way off Carson Street, the business has kept an open store since 1987, has sold online since 1997, and moved into this roughly 1,800-square-foot room in January 1999 once the Lakewood shopping center holding its old shop was sold to be demolished, with its own site putting the stock at 35,000-plus items. The trade desk runs three-for-one on mass-market and larger paperbacks matched by subject, mystery against mystery and romance against romance, and issues credit on a card carrying no expiration date; the buying side is narrower, aimed at art, military, transportation and the history of specific subjects, plus anything leather-bound or still wearing a jacket, and it turns down book-club editions, school textbooks, encyclopedias and Reader's Digest sets. Pull up outside with a full trunk, say so at the counter, and somebody comes out to look — Monday through Saturday only, since Sunday is not a buying day, and a call to 562-420-1034 gets Roger out to an estate. On January 4, 2026 the shop's own Facebook feed advertised a spread of politics, history, reference, fiction and cookbooks at $1 a copy, six for $5 or twelve for $10.

Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–4pm, Sun noon–5pmWebsite

Design & vintage bookstore

Library of Technics

205 Long Beach Blvd, Long Beach, CA 90802

Downtown, directly across the boulevard from the building that held Acres of Books and under a ceiling the shop bills as historic, this covers graphic design, architecture, fashion, film and photography in new printings and out-of-print copies alike, with vintage Americana and European clothing along one side. Its FAQ is blunt about the secondhand half: those titles are one of one and tend to go fast, either in the room or through the showcases it posts weekly on Instagram, so read the web shop as a sample and not as the inventory. Prices are set where a specialist would set them, $165 for a first-edition Realistic Illustrations in Japan from May 1984 and $95 for the 2002 Thames and Hudson Eggleston. The same site records the store bringing the Long Beach Architectural Club, first formed in 1925, back to life during 2025, and lists a European calligraphy workshop at Olive and Rose for June 2026.

Hours : Tue–Sat noon–7pm, Sun 2–6pm; closed MonWebsite

Friends of the Library bookshop

The Friends Bookshop, Billie Jean King Main Library

200 W Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90802

The Friends of the Long Beach Public Library keep their shop at first-floor level inside the Billie Jean King building, immediately to your left as you come in off Broadway, stocked with donated books, DVDs and CDs. There is no register: payment goes into an honor box, so bring cash or a checkbook, and the room posts no hours of its own, which leaves the building's own — Tuesday and Thursday 10am to 7pm, Wednesday noon to 6pm, a 10am start and a 5pm close on Friday and again on Saturday, shut both Sunday and Monday. The group's Spring 2026 newsletter set its Big Book Sale for Saturday, April 11 in the same building from 10am to 3pm, with tables, boxes and carts of gently used and nearly-new stock priced mostly at $1 or less, one free book for every child, and half an hour of free parking next door in the City Center Garage at 332 W Broadway. Every neighborhood branch in the city carries a Friends rack worked the same way, price list taped to the shelf and a box for the money.

Hours : Tue 10am–7pm, Wed noon–6pm, Thu 10am–7pm, Fri–Sat 10am–5pm; closed Sun–MonWebsite

Used bookstores

BOOKOFF Lakewood Center Mall

334 Lakewood Center Mall, Lakewood, CA 90712

Some six miles inland to the north-east, in Lakewood, the Japanese chain works a counter on the lower level of Lakewood Center near the Costco, moving books, vinyl, CDs, cassettes, Blu-rays, DVDs, VHS, video games, consoles and collectibles in both directions, with trading cards taken off you but not sold back. The mall's own listing for it describes used books in like-new condition beside comics, magazines and discs, and puts the center at Monday to Thursday 10am–8pm, Friday and Saturday 10am–9pm and Sunday 11am–7pm. Nothing needs booking on the selling side: carry your boxes in with a government photo ID, take a waiting number while the counter grades them, and what you get back is one cash sum covering the lot, with refusals either returned or left behind for the store to handle. Read two footnotes before building a day around this address: the chain's store page prints its hours link as lakewoodcenter.com, a domain parked and advertised for sale, though the address behind the link resolves to the live shoplakewoodcenter.com, and the mall newsroom announced on August 20, 2025 that Pacific Retail Capital Partners, Lyon Living and Silverpeak had bought the property to redevelop it.

Hours : Mon–Thu 10am–8pm, Fri–Sat 10am–9pm, Sun 11am–7pm (mall hours)Website

All spots by type

Library book sales

Friends of the Library bookstore

FoLL Bookstore, Angelo M. Iacoboni Library

4990 Clark Ave, Lakewood, CA 90712

Also in Lakewood, just east of the mall counter on Clark Avenue, the Friends of the Lakewood Libraries have run a store inside the Angelo M. Iacoboni Library since the branch came back from renovation on February 12, 2001, selling used books, magazines, puzzles and media down to CDs, DVDs and vinyl records. It is cash only, and you are expected to turn up carrying something to put the books in, because nothing gets packed for you. The Friends say their volunteers are nearly able to match the bookstore hours to the library's and send you to the schedule posted inside the store, so read the county clock as the outer bound: Tuesday and Wednesday from noon to 8pm, then a 10am opening and a 6pm close for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, shut at the start and the end of the week. Their site was counting down to a cash-only community sale in this building on Saturday, September 26, 2026, and the librarians here take donations in moderate amounts, up to two banker's boxes a visit.

Hours : Library hours: Tue–Wed noon–8pm, Thu–Sat 10am–6pm; closed Sun–MonWebsite

Self-service library bookstore

Self-service bookstore, George Nye, Jr. Library

6600 Del Amo Blvd, Lakewood, CA 90713

Lakewood's second branch, out on Del Amo Boulevard, carries what the Lakewood Friends describe as a self-service bookstore, sitting in a building that reopened on November 12, 2024 after the county renovated it over that summer and fall, next to a saltwater aquarium the volunteers tell you not to miss. The county posts it 10am to 6pm on Monday, on Thursday and on Friday, noon to 8pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, and shut both Saturday and Sunday, which makes it a weekday errand or no errand at all. The same page that describes the shelf dates the group's Quartermania fundraiser to October 3, 2026 at the Lakewood Youth Center on Woodruff Avenue, which is where the volunteers will be that Saturday.

Hours : Mon 10am–6pm, Tue–Wed noon–8pm, Thu–Fri 10am–6pm; closed Sat–SunWebsite

Friends of the Library bookstore

Friends of the Cerritos Library Bookstore

18025 Bloomfield Ave, Cerritos, CA 90703

Cerritos, ten miles north-east and a separate city, puts its Friends store at street level in the city library, selling gently used books and multimedia at bargain prices with bottled water and office supplies on the same counter. This entry carries no hours field because the city contradicts itself: the library site gives the store Monday to Friday 11am to 6:30pm and both Saturday and Sunday 11am to 4:30pm, repeats those figures on the Friends page, and then states on its own hours page that the library is closed on Sunday. Take the shorter reading and make Sunday a call to 562-916-1350 rather than a drive. The city's Friends of the Cerritos Library page and the library's own July 2026 newsletter both set a one-day sale for Saturday, August 15, 11am to 4:30pm inside the building near the Craftsman Area, with fiction, nonfiction, foreign-language titles and multimedia in the mix.

Website

Friends of the Library lobby shelves

Friends of the Torrance Library lobby shelves

3301 Torrance Blvd, Torrance, CA 90503

Torrance, ten miles out and another separate city, keeps its Friends stock on brightly lit shelves in the main lobby of the Katy Geissert Civic Center Library, all of it gently used, restocked daily, with a seasonal display rotating monthly and bargain hardbacks, paperbacks, DVDs and puzzles alongside; a lock box at the side of the shelf takes your payment before you walk out. Nothing separate is posted for the shelves, so the building sets the window: Monday and Wednesday noon to 8pm, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10am to 6pm, Saturday 9am to 5pm, closed Sunday. Three weekend sales a year fill in the rest, and the group published its 2026 dates as March 20–22, August 21–23 and October 16–18, Friday held for members with a $5 membership sold at the door from 1pm and the Saturday and Sunday open to everyone. The Torrance Buzz Weekly wrote the operation up on June 22, 2026 and returned to the lobby shelves on July 6; the Friends also list their more unusual finds through an Alibris storefront, which is the cheap way to check before driving the 405.

Hours : Mon, Wed noon–8pm, Tue, Thu–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 9am–5pm; closed SunWebsite

Friends-run library bookshop

Friends of the Redondo Beach Public Library Book Store

303 N Pacific Coast Hwy, Redondo Beach, CA 90277

Redondo Beach pays for its own library department, and the Friends attached to it hold a small secondhand store in the Main Library lobby off Pacific Coast Highway, taking donated books and current magazines over the counter while they are open. The times are theirs rather than the building's, and they are ragged, which the Friends address on the same page by saying they are working to expand the hours and asking for volunteers in the store: Monday 11:15am to 5pm, Tuesday and Wednesday to 4pm, Thursday afternoons from 1:30 to 6:30pm, Friday 10:15am to 5:30pm and Saturday 10:15am to 4:30pm. A flat-bottomed reusable book bag comes free with a $10 purchase, and a canvas one with a membership. The Friends also stage sales in the building itself — the library's youth services account posted one for Saturday, May 9, 2026 in the Storytime Room, 10am to 2pm with members admitted at 9:30am and the proceeds going to the summer reading program.

Hours : Mon 11:15am–5pm, Tue–Wed 11:15am–4pm, Thu 1:30–6:30pm, Fri 10:15am–5:30pm, Sat 10:15am–4:30pm; closed SunWebsite

Friends book sale room

Peninsula Center Library book sale area

701 Silver Spur Rd, Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274

Up on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, in Rolling Hills Estates, the Peninsula Library Friends Foundation states its rule in one line: when the Peninsula Center Library is open, so is the book sale area. The larger event runs in the second-floor parking garage on the first Friday-to-Sunday of the month from 10am to 4:30pm, with September 4–6, October 2–4, November 6–8 and December 4–6 posted for 2026, and donations of books, CDs, DVDs and vinyl albums accepted on the second Saturday between 10am and noon in the same space. A gift shop staffed by the same volunteers sits on the third floor opposite the circulation desk. The library around all of it works a 10am to 8pm day from Monday through Thursday, drops to a 2pm start and a 6pm close on Friday, gives you 10am to 5pm on Saturday and 1pm to 5pm on Sunday — and the foundation says takings from the shop are part of what pays for that Sunday.

Hours : Mon–Thu 10am–8pm, Fri 2–6pm, Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 1–5pmWebsite

Monthly Friends book sale

Malaga Cove Library book sale

2400 Via Campesina, Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274

The Peninsula Library Friends Foundation also works a second room down the hill in Palos Verdes Estates, and its schedule here falls on the third Friday plus the Saturday after it, 10am to 5pm, which in 2026 means September 18 and 19, October 16 and 17, November 20 and 21, then December 18 and 19. Donations can be dropped at this branch all year round at a signposted point rather than handed to staff, which is not true at the Peninsula Center site. The branch keeps a shorter week than that one — 10am to 6pm Monday through Thursday, a 2pm start on Friday with a 6pm close, 10am to 5pm on Saturday, nothing on Sunday — so the Friday half of any sale weekend cannot begin before mid-afternoon.

Website

Scan before you buy

At every one of these spots, snap the shelf with BiblioScan: the AI identifies each book and shows its real resale price. Walk out with profitable books, not random boxes.

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Local sourcing tips

Build the day around one of three runs, because they do not link up. The downtown pair — the design shop on the boulevard and the honor box inside the city's main library — stands roughly a quarter mile apart, with Signal Hill under three miles out by car and the Parkview Village store just under six. The northern run is Lakewood, where the mall counter, the Iacoboni store and the Nye shelf all fall inside a two-mile spread, and Cerritos lies three miles beyond the last of them. The western run is Torrance, Redondo Beach, Rolling Hills Estates and Palos Verdes Estates, and it runs from just under ten miles out to a little past twelve.
Carry cash, in small bills. The Broadway honor box takes no card and asks for cash or a check; the Torrance lobby shelves are worked off a lock box you feed on your way out; the store in the Iacoboni building takes cash only and wants you carrying your own bag. None of those is a card reader. The mall counter in Lakewood pays out in cash as well, so the whole page effectively runs on notes and coin.
Sunday guts the volunteer half of this map. Long Beach's main library closes, so does Torrance, the Nye branch is dark right through the weekend, Malaga Cove shuts, and Cerritos publishes a library that is closed alongside a bookstore that claims to be open; among the donation rooms only the Peninsula Center opens, and not until one in the afternoon. The trade shops carry that day instead: Signal Hill 11am to 7pm, the Parkview Village store noon to 5pm, the boulevard design shop 2 to 6pm and the mall from 11am. Monday reverses it, closing the design shop, the Iacoboni store and the Broadway room while the rest stay open.
The sale calendar is worth more than the shelves are. Torrance printed three weekend dates for 2026 and the last is October 16 to 18. The Lakewood Friends fixed a cash-only sale for September 26, 2026. The Palos Verdes foundation opens its garage book room at the Peninsula Center on eleven opening weekends of 2026, July excepted, and a second room at Malaga Cove two weeks after each of them. Cerritos announced one-day sales for February 21, May 16 and August 15 through its own newsletters. A weekend that lines two of those up is worth booking a month out.
Selling here is a short list. Book-Off at Lakewood Center takes books, discs, vinyl, cassettes, games, consoles and collectibles with no appointment, a photo ID and one cash figure at the end. Once Read Books trades paperbacks three-for-one inside a genre and buys hardback non-fiction in a named handful of subjects — art, military, transportation, the history of specific things — and will come to your car or out to an estate. Nothing else here publishes a buying policy at all; the volunteer rooms take donations, which clears your shelf and returns you nothing.
Four addresses come up in searches for secondhand books around here and should not shape a route. Page Against The Machine on East Fourth Street is an activist bookstore whose own web catalog tags 19 of its 504 listings as used and the rest as new; Bel Canto Books, six blocks west at 2106 East Fourth Street, carries no used stock at all across the 524 titles in its own web catalog; and Easy Does It on East Broadway, reopened under Ken and Kristie Nairne on April 12, 2024, sells twelve-step recovery literature, meeting chips and gifts, with its own site saying nothing about a secondhand section. The Long Beach Antique Market fills the Veterans Stadium lot on the third Sunday and was taking sellers for September 20 and October 18, but its organizer advertises antiques and collectibles rather than any kind of book, which makes it a gamble and not an itinerary.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find cheap used books in Long Beach?

Within the city itself, this page has nothing cheaper than the Friends' honor box a few paces in from the West Broadway entrance of the main library, where volunteers put out donated books, DVDs and CDs and leave you to pay yourself; every neighborhood branch keeps a rack run the same way. One step up, Once Read Books ran a dollar-a-copy table in a post of its own on January 4, 2026, with bulk rates attached for six books and for twelve. Beyond the city line, the two cheapest rooms listed here are the Torrance lobby lock box and the Iacoboni store in Lakewood, both cash only. For quantity rather than price, the chain desk inside the Lakewood mall carries used books graded like-new beside comics, magazines and discs.

Where do I sell used books in Long Beach?

Realistically there are two counters and one marketplace. The chain desk in the Lakewood mall grades books, discs, records, tapes, games, hardware and collectibles on the spot, wants no booking and a government photo ID, then hands back one figure in cash covering everything. The Parkview Village shop swaps paperbacks at a ratio of three to one inside a matching genre, pays for hardback non-fiction across a short published list of subjects, and sends someone out to an estate on a phone call. Handing a box to a Friends group clears space and pays you nothing. Marketplace listing is where the money is, and it needs you to know which copies justify the effort. BiblioScan does that sorting: shoot one photo of the shelf with the spines facing out, and every title comes back with a resale value attached, which tells you the handful to list yourself and the rest to unload at a counter.

Which day is best for book hunting in Long Beach?

Thursday or Friday. Everything on this page that keeps a weekly schedule is open on both, the Redondo Beach store runs its longest day on Friday until 5:30pm, and the Palos Verdes book room opens on the month's first Friday. Saturday works as well and adds the one-day library sales, though the Nye branch is closed that day. Avoid Sunday, when most of the volunteer rooms are shut, and watch Monday, which closes the boulevard design shop, the Broadway room and the Clark Avenue store in Lakewood.

When is the Friends of the Library sale in Long Beach?

The city's own group held its Big Book Sale on Saturday, April 11, 2026 at the main library on Broadway, 10am to 3pm, with most items at $1 or less and thirty minutes free in the City Center Garage; its Spring 2026 newsletter carried no later sale date, though the group's home page shows a photo captioned "Big turnout at the Summer Book Sale", so ask before you count on the shop alone. Between sales that shop inside the same building stays open on the library's clock. If you want a date you can plan a trip around, look outside the city limits: Lakewood set September 26, 2026, Torrance published October 16 to 18, and the peninsula group has posted garage-room weekends for September 4 to 6, October 2 to 4, November 6 to 8 and December 4 to 6.

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