Pickering and Ajax share a stretch of Lake Ontario shoreline just past Toronto's eastern edge, and together they counted about 226,000 people in the 2021 census: 99,186 in Pickering and 126,666 in Ajax. This guide works outward from Pickering City Hall on The Esplanade and covers both municipalities, including Pickering Village, the old core along Old Kingston Road that is now part of Ajax, and the rural hamlets of north Pickering such as Claremont and Greenwood. Whitby, the next town east, is covered with Oshawa, while anything west of the Rouge River falls under Toronto. Dollar figures throughout are Canadian.
The shop list is short and a little unusual. In Ajax, a volunteer-run charity shop on Westney Road South sells nothing but donated books, music, films and puzzles; in Pickering, two comic dealers cover the back-issue side, one of them a warehouse where a dollar buys most single issues. Two thrift stores on the Kingston Road corridor round things out, and most of these stops are a car trip apart rather than a walk.
The real volume arrives in November. Ajax Public Library opens the season by giving books away on Saturday, November 7, 2026, asking only for pay-what-you-can donations, and Pickering Public Library follows six days later with three days of selling beside City Hall. Pickering's tables are filled with books handed in by local readers, collected at the Central Library in the weeks leading up to the sale.
Volunteer-run charity bookshopNew Friends Book Shop
520 Westney Rd S, Ajax, ON
In south Ajax, on Westney Road South about 4.1 km east of Pickering City Hall, this shop is staffed by volunteers and told followers on April 24, 2026, via Instagram, that its proceeds support local shelters. An August 5, 2026 post spelled out the stock as records, CDs, DVDs and puzzles on top of shelf after shelf of books, and its summer pictures of customers' Saturday piles mixed classics, thrillers, romance, fantasy, horror and kids' titles. After asking for donations because the shelves had room to fill, the shop reported on Saturday, October 10, 2026 that more than 300 books had come in that day. An October 7, 2026 post priced jigsaw puzzles at $1 for 500 pieces and $2 for 1,000.
Hours: Tue–Sat 11am–4pmWebsite Library book salesPickering Public Library Fall Book Sale
Central Library, 1 The Esplanade, Pickering, ON L1V 2R6
In the civic complex beside City Hall, Pickering Public Library fills the first-floor maker space of its Central Library with novels, non-fiction and kids' titles for a Friday-to-Sunday sale ending November 15, 2026, taking cash, debit and credit cards. The library's sale page warns that the Sunday session lasts only while stock holds out and says all the money raised pays for library programs. A spring edition ran in May 2026, when a donation of $15 or more bought early entry on May 21 or 22, and an October 10, 2026 Instagram post put the same early-access passes on offer for the fall sale from October 12.
Hours: November 13, 2026, 10am–8pm; November 14, 2026, 10am–4:30pm; November 15, 2026, noon–3pmWebsite Library book salesAjax Public Library Big Book Sale
Main Branch, 55 Harwood Ave S, Ajax, ON L1S 2H8
In Ajax, the library's Main Branch on Harwood Avenue South, 5.3 km east-northeast of Pickering City Hall, stages the one-day Big Book Sale on November 7, 2026. According to the library's event listing it is a drop-in for all ages where every book is free, and pay-what-you-can gifts to the library are welcome; an October 14, 2026 Instagram post told readers to bring their biggest tote bags. When durhamregion.com profiled the library on January 18, 2025, it captioned a photo of the sale as the annual spring edition; the 2026 round falls in November instead.
Hours: November 7, 2026, 9am–4:30pmWebsite Comic warehouse with $1 back issuesGuardian Comics
910 Brock Rd, Pickering, ON L1W 2A1
On Brock Road, 1.8 km southeast of City Hall, Guardian Comics calls itself a massive comic book store and warehouse with more than 150,000 issues, most of them at $1, next to graded key issues and Pokémon cards. Its about page adds that the shop buys comics and will tell you what a collection is worth even when it passes on it, and the Internet Archive kept copies of that page and of the home page in April 2026. Opening hours run from early morning to mid-afternoon on weekdays, with Saturdays and Sundays by appointment only, so a weekend visit means arranging a time first.
Hours: Mon–Fri 7am–3pmWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Pickering?
At the library sales first: the Ajax sale on November 7, 2026 lets you take books for free and leave whatever donation you choose, and Pickering's sale the following weekend raises money for the library. For comics, Guardian Comics on Brock Road prices most of its 150,000-plus issues at $1, and Heroic Dreams has run bin deals as low as $2. Between sales, New Friends Book Shop in Ajax is the steady option, and its October 2026 donation drive brought in hundreds of fresh books.
Where do I sell used books in Pickering?
Comics are the easy case: Guardian Comics buys collections and offers to explain their value even if it declines them. For ordinary books, New Friends Book Shop and the Pickering library accept donations rather than buying, so anything worth money is better listed on Amazon.ca, AbeBooks, Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace. To sort the pile first, snap the bookcase in BiblioScan, which puts a resale estimate under each spine it can name and makes plain which copies repay the trouble of a listing.
Which day is best for book hunting in Pickering?
A weekday from Tuesday to Friday, when New Friends, Guardian Comics, the Kingston Road thrift store run by the Salvation Army and both Value Villages all have their doors open. Guardian switches to appointments on Saturdays, New Friends keeps Mondays as a day off, and Sunday leaves the Value Villages as the only stops here with posted hours. In November, Saturday the 7th in Ajax and Friday the 13th in Pickering, opening day of each library sale, beat any ordinary week.
When is the big library book sale in Pickering?
Pickering Public Library's fall round opens on Friday the 13th of November 2026 with its longest day and closes that Sunday after a short afternoon session. Ajax gets in first: its library gives away the stock at the Main Branch on Saturday, November 7, 2026. Pickering also ran a spring sale in May 2026.