Where to buy used books in Philadelphia

Updated 9/2/2026

Philadelphia keeps its secondhand books in five clusters, and four of them you can walk. Old City has The Book Trader on North 2nd, two floors of stock a few minutes from Independence Hall. South Street and Fabric Row hold Mostly Books, Brickbat and Neighborhood Books within a short stretch of one another, with Molly's in the Italian Market and Little Yenta further down East Passyunk. University City pairs The Last Word with House of Our Own against the Penn campus, and Fishtown has Lot 49 on East Girard. The fifth cluster is nowhere near Center City: Chestnut Hill, Manayunk, Fox Chase and Andorra sit at the end of a Regional Rail line or a long drive, and two more stops — Cathy's in Havertown and the Elkins Park library sale in Cheltenham Township — lie outside the city limits altogether. Those two say so in their own opening sentence.

Plan the day around the trade counters, because in this city they disagree with each other far more than they agree. The Book Trader hands over no cash whatsoever: credit alone, pitched at a tenth to a fifth of what a title first sold for, Monday to Friday, two bags a visit, and it will not so much as glance at a trade on a Saturday. Little Yenta Books has shut its door on walk-in sellers and wants pictures by email before anything moves, then pays roughly a third of resale value as credit or about a fifth of it as cash. Cathy's out in Havertown works by appointment, halves the credit figure if you want money instead, and publishes its refusals as a PDF. Brickbat buys over the counter but warns up front that its shop is tiny and its taste correspondingly narrow. Everything else here sells without buying, or buys without publishing a rate.

Several changes since 2025 will catch out an older guide. Bookhaven, the two-floor warren at 22nd and Fairmount that ran for nearly forty years, shut in March 2026 when the Andeers' health gave out; The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on May 22, 2026 that a local couple, Eliza Brilliant and Ilia Ovechkin, had bought the business, and the shop's own page still read "reopening summer 2026" at the start of September. Port Richmond Books, several hundred thousand volumes in a 1913 movie house on Richmond Street, is closed permanently and says as much on its own Facebook page. Manayunk gained a horror, thriller and true-crime specialist, Thrillerdelphia, which opened on Halloween 2025 and stocks used alongside new. And before you pencil in a December trip: the Philadelphia Rare Book Fair ran at Trinity Memorial Church on December 4 to 6, 2025, and its producer, Fine Book Fairs, carries no Philadelphia date at all on its 2026 calendar.

Spot map

The best spots

Used bookstores

The Book Trader

7 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Two packed floors across from Christ Church in Old City, trading since 1975 and at this address since 2004, with a claim on its own site to being the largest used bookstore in Philadelphia. Read the trading-policies page before you haul anything down: it does not buy for cash at all, only store credit worth 10 to 20% of a book's original sale price, held on a house account you draw against at the front desk. Trades are capped at two grocery bags or two small boxes unless you call ahead, they are taken on weekdays only — never at the weekend, no exceptions — and ex-library copies, textbooks and marked-up books are refused outright. LPs, CDs and DVDs in clean cases are welcome, and the shop turned up on the Philly Bookstore Crawl roster for August 22, 2026 running a Warhammer raffle and gift-certificate giveaways.

Hours : Daily 11am–10pm; closed Thanksgiving and ChristmasWebsite

Friends of the Free Library bookstore

Book Corner

311 N 20th St, Philadelphia, PA 19103

The Friends of the Free Library of Philadelphia have run this one since 1991, in a corner shop at 20th and Wood, a block north of the Ben Franklin Parkway and directly behind Parkway Central Library on Logan Square. Everything on the shelves was donated by the public — fiction, non-fiction, art, architecture, crafts, out-of-print titles and first editions, plus records and CDs — and the takings go back into branch libraries across the city. The Friends' own page publishes a flat six-day week and gives equal billing to the two shop cats, Chaucer, who works the door, and Pencil, who sleeps on the shelves. Their news page was advertising the Annual Summer Book Sale for Friday June 5 and Saturday June 6, 2026, hundreds of books at cut prices, with the standing advice to arrive early.

Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pmWebsite

Used bookstores

Little Yenta Books

1912 E Passyunk Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19148

The shop that spent its first stretch tucked into the back of a South Philly children's dressmaking business now has a proper storefront on East Passyunk Avenue with roughly triple the stock; The Philadelphia Inquirer photographed co-owners Simon and Ariel Censor in the new room on Friday, July 17, 2026. It spells out what it pays, down to the percentage: 30 to 40% of resale value in store credit, or 15 to 25% in cash. Walk-in selling is finished — you email images of your spines instead, a single stack in one frame being fine, and the shop names the authors and imprints it will take almost anything from, New York Review Books, Dalkey Archive, Fitzcarraldo, Persephone and Virago among them. Books given outright are rehomed through the shop or through its nonprofit partner BookSmiles.

Hours : Mon, Thu–Fri noon–7pm, Sat–Sun 11am–6pm; closed Tue–WedWebsite

Nonprofit LGBTQ+ bookstore

Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni's Room

345 S 12th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Two converted trinity houses at the corner of 12th and Pine, in the Gayborhood: Giovanni's Room, named after the Baldwin novel, which its own site bills as Philadelphia's landmark gay and feminist bookstore and which dates itself to 1973. Philly AIDS Thrift runs it now, so new and used queer fiction, non-fiction, film and magazines share the rooms with music, clothing, collectibles and artwork, and the proceeds go to the Philly AIDS Fund. The queerbooks.com storefront publishes a seven-day week running to 8pm on six of them, which makes this the easiest evening stop in Center City. The shop laid on guest vendors and live music for the city-wide bookstore crawl held on August 22, 2026.

Hours : Mon–Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–7pmWebsite

Friends of the Library bookstore

Hilltop Books

84 Bethlehem Pike, Philadelphia, PA 19118

Up in Chestnut Hill, the Friends of the Chestnut Hill Library turned decades of Monday afternoon table sales — running since the 1970s at 25 cents, 50 cents and a dollar a book — into a permanent storefront, opened on Bethlehem Pike in April 2021 in a neighborhood that had gone without a bookstore since Borders closed in 2010. Volunteers staff it, the stock is donated, and every dollar goes back to the Chestnut Hill branch of the Free Library. Two things justify the Regional Rail trip: the donations come from a neighborhood thick with education professionals, so the history and scholarly shelves punch well above the price band, and the shop trades six days a week, unusual for an all-volunteer operation. Sixty shops took part in the bookstore crawl of August 22, 2026, and this was one of them.

Hours : Tue noon–5pm, Wed noon–7pm, Thu–Fri noon–5pm, Sat 10am–5pm, Sun noon–5pmWebsite

All spots by type

Used bookstores

Mostly Books

529 Bainbridge St, Philadelphia, PA 19147

A block off South Street, in a row of nineteenth-century workshops knocked through into a warren of rooms, holding a stock the store's own NewPages listing puts above 50,000 used books, with VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs and LPs filling whatever the shelves do not. That same listing mentions the part most guides skip: the shop swaps books as well as selling them. It joined the fourth Philly Bookstore Crawl on August 22, 2026 and set up a small-press and poetry fair on the pavement outside for the day. Nothing the shop itself controls publishes opening hours, so call before you make the trip across town.

Used bookstores

Neighborhood Books

1906 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19146

Near 19th and South, a few minutes from Rittenhouse Square, a secondhand shop the owner opened in 2013 after a bookselling career that began in 1988 and ran through Philadelphia and Portland, Maine. Its Bookshop.org storefront describes the physical stock as 25,000 volumes weighted toward the humanities — art, photography, philosophy, history, general fiction across every genre — with a thorough science and psychology run stocked deliberately for the medical students nearby, and children's books from board and picture titles up to young adult. Do not judge the place by that web page: the new-book inventory listed there is a separate virtual store and tells you nothing about what sits on the floor. The crawl map for August 22, 2026 had it marked.

Website

Used bookstores

Brickbat Books

709 S 4th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147

On Fabric Row between Bainbridge and Monroe, opened in 2008 by the owner of Big Jar Books, the Old City shop that had closed the year before. The buying guidelines it posts are worth reading before you carry a box over, because the room is small and the selection correspondingly narrow: literature, genre fiction, poetry, philosophy, art monographs, comics and cookbooks yes; bestsellers, fantasy series, textbooks and self-help no, and nothing with underlining, torn pages or a damaged cover. It will not take a whole collection without going through the content first, and it says plainly that rare books and first editions are not its specialty. The back of the shop doubles as a small venue — the poet Logan Phillips listed a reading here for April 29, 2026 on his own tour calendar.

Website

Used bookstores

Molly's Books & Records

1010 S 9th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147

In the middle of the Italian Market curb stalls, a family business run by third-generation bookseller Molly Russakoff with her husband Joe Ankenbrand, who came to it from vinyl: used books and used records share the floor, and the cookbook wall is what people cross town for. Buying, selling and trading all happen here, books and records and discs alike. PhillyVoice listed the shop among the sixty stops of the fourth Philly Bookstore Crawl in its preview of August 18, 2026. Time a visit for a Saturday morning while the market is running and you can work the produce stalls and the shelves in a single pass.

Website

Used bookstores

The Last Word Bookshop

220 S 40th St, Philadelphia, PA 19104

University City's standby stands on 40th Street just below Walnut, a short walk from the Penn campus, mixing new titles with used shelves that run deep in art, history and fiction. Its own trade listings advertise cash paid for quality used and out-of-print stock, which makes it the obvious first call when a student clear-out lands in the back of your car. The Philly Bookstore Crawl counted it among the sixty stops for August 22, 2026, with shop-branded tote bags on sale for the day. It publishes no hours of its own anywhere, so treat any grid you find on a directory site as guesswork.

Used bookstores

House of Our Own Books

3920 Spruce St, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Two floors of a quiet Victorian house on Spruce Street, hard against the University of Pennsylvania campus, trading since 1971. The shop's own description splits the stock between new and used and leans scholarly — cultural studies, history, literary criticism, politics — shelved tidily enough that you can work a subject right through without asking. That academic weighting is precisely why the used side rewards a scanner: this is where seminar sets, dissertations and out-of-print monographs surface when a department office gets emptied. It shows up on the map for the city-wide bookstore day of August 22, 2026.

Used bookstores

Lot 49 Books

408 E Girard Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19125

Founded in 2021 on the ground floor of a house in South Philadelphia — the owner credits a Ferlinghetti biography and its account of an improvised apartment bookshop in postwar Europe — and moved to East Girard Avenue in Fishtown in 2023. New and used sit together, weighted to literary fiction, poetry, art books, political history and zines, with a separate online arm built around twentieth-century firsts, signed copies and out-of-print material. Its own Bookshop.org page is refreshingly blunt about the schedule: the real-life address is 408 E Girard Ave, "with hours that fluctuate between 6-7 days a week." It was on the August 22, 2026 crawl roster.

Website

Used bookstores

Thrillerdelphia

4203 Main St, Philadelphia, PA 19127

Out on Main Street in Manayunk, a 700-square-foot shop given over entirely to horror, thrillers and true crime, which PhillyVoice covered on October 30, 2025 ahead of a Halloween soft launch. Its own publicity kit describes shelves that blend new and used stock with a growing wall of horror on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray, a category almost nobody else in the city bothers to price. Owners Tina and Anthony Long also run Cupid's Bookshop, so the buying is done by people who know what a signed limited edition is worth. The events calendar keeps the room busy: a Blitzkid in-store appearance is booked for November 30, 2026, tickets $30.

Website

Used bookstores

Cathy's Half Price Books

1305 West Chester Pike, Havertown, PA 19083

Out in Havertown, a Delaware County township twenty minutes west of Center City on Route 3, in the Manoa Shopping Center between the Acme and the Rite Aid — which means free parking front and back, rare enough on this page to matter. The shop opened in 2004 and puts its holding above 60,000 new and gently used books, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, graphic novels and comics. Selling here is by appointment and nothing else: telephone first, bring at most two or three grocery bags or boxes, and take store credit or half that amount in cash, the cash side capped by a daily payout maximum. Its buying sheet, dated June 2025, rules out book-club hardcovers, ex-library copies, encyclopedias, condensed Reader's Digest, computer manuals and textbooks over two years old, and anything out of a smoking household.

Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–8pm, Sun 11am–6pm; trading noon–5pm by appointmentWebsite

Library book sales

Monthly Friends sale

Friends of Ryerss Used Book Sale

Ryerss Museum & Library, 7370 Central Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19111

In the basement of a Victorian mansion in Burholme Park, up in Fox Chase in the far Northeast, the Friends of Ryerss hold a used book sale on the first Saturday of every month from 11am to 3pm; the schedule sits on the museum's own calendar, which listed the August 1, 2026 edition alongside a September 27 documentary screening. It runs downstairs rather than in the galleries, which is easy to walk straight past if you came for the museum. The building itself is free and open Friday to Sunday from 10 to 4, and it earns the detour on its own: Chinese art, Centennial relics, a circulating library independent of the Free Library system, and a pet cemetery in the grounds. Check the Ryerss Facebook page before setting out, since the calendar warns that monthly events move.

Hours : First Saturday of the month, 11am–3pmWebsite

Monthly Friends sale

Friends of Elkins Park Library Book Sale

Elkins Park Free Library, 563 Church Rd, Elkins Park, PA 19027

Out in Elkins Park, in Cheltenham Township just over the northern city line, the Friends of Elkins Park Library run a monthly weekend sale in the library community room — Friday noon to 5:30, Saturday 10 to 3:30, Sunday 1 to 3:30 — and the September 2026 edition closed on Sunday the 20th. Thousands of items go out each time: hardcovers and paperbacks for every age, vinyl albums, puzzles and board games, most books between 50 cents and $2, with buy-one-get-one and half-price specials layered on top. The township calendar states that new acquisitions are added every month, which is the detail that decides whether coming back is worth it. The season runs September through June and finishes with a $6 bag sale, the last of them held on June 12, 2026.

Hours : Fri noon–5:30pm, Sat 10am–3:30pm, Sun 1–3:30pmWebsite

Branch patio sale

Friends of Andorra Library Book Sale

Andorra Library, 705 E Cathedral Rd, Philadelphia, PA 19128

At Henry Avenue and Cathedral Road, on the Roxborough side of the city, the Friends of the Andorra Library sell on the patio outside the branch rather than indoors; the Free Library of Philadelphia's own event calendar carried the May 30, 2026 edition, opening at 1pm. Most books are priced between $1 and $5 and the stall takes cash or PayPal. The Friends ask specifically for children's books, mysteries, fiction and cookbooks, and are just as specific that nothing may be left at the branch — donations go through Sue Syrnick, who chairs the group. Dates shift from one sale to the next, so read the branch calendar rather than assuming a fixed month.

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.

Try BiblioScan for free

Local sourcing tips

Four counters in this city publish what they will pay, and no two of them work the same way. Old City is credit-only and weekday-only, at 10 to 20% of original list, capped at two bags unless the shop has agreed to more by telephone; a Saturday trade is refused flat. East Passyunk is the only one of the four that quotes an outright cash percentage, but it no longer sees sellers cold, so budget a day for the email exchange before you load the car. Havertown wants an appointment, inspects in front of you, and lets you take money at half the credit valuation, subject to a daily payout ceiling. Fabric Row is the fourth, buying over the counter but only inside a published genre list that shuts out self-help, textbooks, fantasy series and anything that was ever a bestseller. Nobody else on this page buys against a stated rate.
The cheap end here is volunteer-run, and it works on a monthly rhythm rather than one big annual blowout. Cheltenham Township gives you three days a month between September and June, opening at noon on the Friday and closing mid-afternoon on the Sunday, with the bulk of the stock priced from 50 cents to $2. Fox Chase takes the first Saturday of each month, 11 to 3, in the Ryerss basement. The Andorra branch sets up outdoors on dates that move about — the last one carried by the Free Library calendar fell on May 30, 2026 — with nothing above $5. Book Corner adds a single headline weekend, its Annual Summer Book Sale, which the Friends held on the fifth and sixth of June 2026. And once a year the whole city plays: the Philly Bookstore Crawl put sixty shops on an interactive map for Saturday, August 22, 2026.
Opening hours are the weak point of a Philadelphia sourcing run, because half these shops publish none. Mostly Books, Neighborhood Books, The Last Word, Brickbat, Molly's, House of Our Own and Thrillerdelphia all leave the directories to guess, and the directories disagree — the Andorra Friends only commit to a 1pm opening. Lot 49 is at least honest about it, saying on its own page that the schedule fluctuates between six and seven days a week. What you can rely on: The Book Trader from 11am to 10pm every day but Thanksgiving and Christmas, Giovanni's Room to 8pm six nights, Book Corner Monday to Saturday from 10 to 6, and Cathy's to 8pm Monday through Saturday. Hilltop closes Mondays and Little Yenta closes Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Build the day around one cluster and the transit works; try to cross the city twice and it does not. Old City, Center City and South Philadelphia give you a walkable chain — The Book Trader, then Giovanni's Room at 12th and Pine, then Molly's in the Italian Market, Brickbat on Fabric Row, Mostly Books off South Street and Little Yenta down East Passyunk. West Philadelphia is a separate half-day: The Last Word and House of Our Own sit four blocks apart around 40th and Spruce. Fishtown adds Lot 49 on East Girard. Chestnut Hill and Manayunk need Regional Rail out of Suburban Station, and Fox Chase, Havertown and Elkins Park effectively need a car — which at least means the two suburban stops come with free parking.
Four names in older Philadelphia lists will waste your afternoon. Bookhaven at 22nd and Fairmount closed in March 2026 and was sold in May; its own site still promised a summer 2026 reopening at the start of September, so telephone or read the door before you drive over. Port Richmond Books, the movie-house shop on Richmond Street, is closed for good by its own announcement. Big Jar Books in Old City has been gone since 2007 — Brickbat, opened by the same owner the following year, is where that stock instinct went. And Tree House Books on West Susquehanna Avenue is not a source of buying stock at all: its Giving Library hands books to North Philadelphia readers free, which is a fine thing and the opposite of a sourcing run.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find cheap used books in Philadelphia?

The volunteers set the floor here, not the shops. Elkins Park tags nearly everything in its monthly three-day sale at 50 cents to $2, then ends each season with a $6-a-bag clearance, held on June 12 in 2026. The Friends of Ryerss take over a museum basement in Fox Chase one Saturday a month, from 11 to 3. The Andorra branch sells outdoors at $1 to $5 and takes PayPal. Among the year-round shops, Book Corner and Hilltop Books are the two to work first: both are Friends-run, both sell donated stock at a fraction of retail, and both restock constantly because the donations never stop. If you want volume in one trip rather than one price, Mostly Books lists more than 50,000 used titles across its warren of rooms off South Street.

Where do I sell used books in Philadelphia?

Three real options, and no two of them behave alike. The Book Trader takes volume but pays in credit alone, between a tenth and a fifth of list, weekdays, two bags, which is no use at all if you wanted money. Little Yenta Books is the one that pays real cash, at roughly a fifth of resale against a third or so in credit, but it screens by email first: send one photo of the stack and it will tell you what to bring in. Cathy's in Havertown needs a telephone call first, looks through the box while you stand there, and cuts the credit figure in half if you want money instead. Triage first, though. Shoot a loaded shelf, let BiblioScan price every spine in the frame, and you will see at a glance which few titles justify your own seller account and which crate is never going to be worth more than counter fodder.

Which day is best for book hunting in Philadelphia?

Saturday, with one large caveat. Every shop on this page that opens at all opens on a Saturday, the Friends sales at Ryerss and Elkins Park both land on one, and Hilltop starts at 10am rather than noon. The caveat is selling: The Book Trader refuses trades at the weekend outright, so if you are carrying stock rather than hunting it, come on a weekday and put the Saturday aside for the library basements. Friday is the strong second choice — Elkins Park opens its monthly weekend at noon, Little Yenta and Hilltop are both open, and the Ryerss museum itself is open Friday to Sunday. Keep Tuesday back for listing: Hilltop runs short hours and Little Yenta is shut.

When is the Friends of the Library sale in Philadelphia?

There is no single big one here, which is unusual for a city this size — instead there are three small recurring ones, and together they cover most of the year. Ryerss unlocks its basement on the first Saturday, 11am until 3pm, inside the Burholme Park mansion. Elkins Park, over the line in Cheltenham Township, runs Friday to Sunday once a month, September to June, and the township calendar confirms that fresh stock goes out between one weekend and the next. Andorra sells outside its branch on dates that shift, the latest entry on the Free Library's own calendar being May 30, 2026. The nearest thing to a headline event is Book Corner's Annual Summer Book Sale, which its volunteers held over two days at the start of June 2026.

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