Where to buy used books in Pittsburgh

Updated 9/3/2026

Three rivers and a lot of hills mean this is a driving town for secondhand books, but two of the clusters walk fine. Oakland puts Caliban Book Shop on South Craig Street within a few minutes of the Main library on Forbes Avenue, where the Carnegie holds its one big sale of the year. Downtown and the near East End form the second run: Amazing Books & Records keeps a room under One Oxford Centre downtown and a much larger one on Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill, with the Big Idea collective on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield and Thriftique on 51st Street in Lawrenceville a short drive north of that line. Everything else needs wheels. The North Side has City Books on Galveston Avenue, Point Breeze has Bottom Feeder on Gettysburg Street, Regent Square spills over the Wilkinsburg line to Fungus Books, and Allentown, above the South Side slopes, now has the Book Deli on East Warrington Avenue.

The southern and northern suburbs carry the rest, and four stops on this page stand in boroughs and townships beyond the city line: Mt. Lebanon, Dormont, Green Tree and Monroeville, each named in its own opening sentence. Selling is where Pittsburgh gets interesting, because the two operations that take volume behave nothing alike. Amazing Books will look at up to six boxes per store with nobody booked in advance, weekday afternoons only, and it travels to you when a collection outgrows the car — though it says openly that common titles in decent shape may only earn store credit. The chain counter at Half Price Books hands over money instead, but it values nothing off a photo or a typed inventory, wants government photo ID, and expects you to wait in the room while its buyer sorts the box. Caliban handles appraisals and whole collections by email with images attached, but its own news column says it is on a hiatus from buying books for cash at the shop and will look at them for store credit only, with house calls still by appointment; the partners at Fungus buy from the public over the counter.

Three things have moved since 2025, and each of them breaks an older list. The Book Deli opened in Allentown in July 2026 on a books-by-the-pound counter, filmed on grand-opening day by the developer RE360. Amazing Books returned to the central business district — the Post-Gazette broke the move in October 2025, and the closure of the Shadyside store that paid for it was reported by the Pittsburgh Business Times in January 2026. And the citywide event that now anchors the calendar has grown fast: the Great Pittsburgh Book Crawl records in its published FAQ that 2025 was its first year, with 24 stores and a six-stamp raffle threshold, and that the 2026 edition ran July 18 to 26 across 30 locations in six counties with the threshold raised to fifteen stamps because people were speed-running the short blocks.

Spot map

The best spots

Used bookstores

Caliban Book Shop

410 S Craig St, Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Oakland's used and rare counter stands on South Craig Street, a block from the Carnegie museum complex, and takes its name from the character in The Tempest. The shop's own news column has it trading seven days a week and running Sale Night Thursdays, when the doors stay open to 8:30pm and a revolving discount covers books and records alike. That same column tallies its Bookstores Against Hunger drive at more than $650 sent to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in 2026. Ignore any grid you find elsewhere: the front page advertises 11am to 6pm while the contact page reads noon to 5:30, so call ahead before a long drive.

Website

Used bookstores

Amazing Books & Records (Squirrel Hill)

5858 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15217

The bigger of two rooms run by the same owners, a business that has called itself the largest independent secondhand bookseller in the city since April 2013, and which The New York Times wrote up in August 2019. Its home page announced a place in the 2026 crawl and threw in free cold beer on Saturday July 18 and Saturday July 25, which tells you what sort of room this is; Thursday evenings from 6 to 10 carry the same offer. Buy any three items and a fourth used book or record priced up to $10 comes free, a standing house rule rather than a promotion. One quirk to plan around: this address shuts for twenty-five hours from Friday evening to Saturday evening to honor the Sabbath, reopening an hour after sunset.

Hours : Sun 10am–9pm, Mon–Thu 10am–10pm, Fri 10am–sunset, Sat 1hr after sunset–midnight; closed Friday evening to Saturday eveningWebsite

Used bookstores

City Books

908 Galveston Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15233

Galveston Avenue on the North Side, in Allegheny West a couple of blocks off West North Avenue: four decades of used and collectible stock under a name that has been up since 1984. Owner Arlan Hess runs a writer-in-residence program out of the same room and has an MFA and a stint at the York Antiquarian Book Seminar behind her, which shows in how the older material is priced. The thirty-store lineup published for the July 2026 crawl listed the shop at this address. Its own page sets a short five-day week, so write off Monday and Tuesday before you plan anything.

Hours : Wed–Sun 11am–5pmWebsite

Friends of the Library bookstore

Mt. Lebanon Book Cellar

16 Castle Shannon Blvd, Pittsburgh, PA 15228

Out in Mt. Lebanon, five miles south of downtown, the Friends of the Library have kept a year-round secondhand store downstairs inside the public library, staffed entirely by volunteers. Their online branch was discounting every listed item by 20 percent through September 2026, which is how you tell an active operation from a dormant one. Donations go on a red cart at the end of the lower hallway, and the group turns away encyclopedia sets, any textbook over five years old, VHS and cassettes. The store added two Sunday afternoons, July 19 and 26, 2026, from 1:30 to 4pm for the citywide book crawl, the only hours the library posts outside that six-day week.

Hours : Mon–Thu 10am–8pm, Fri–Sat 10am–4pmWebsite

All spots by type

Used bookstores

Amazing Books & Records (Downtown)

320 Smithfield St, Pittsburgh, PA 15222

The second address occupies the base of One Oxford Centre on Smithfield Street and is the easier of the two to reach without a car. The Post-Gazette reported the return to the central business district in October 2025, and the Pittsburgh Business Times confirmed in January 2026 that the holiday pop-up had gone permanent as the Walnut Street store closed. This room keeps ordinary retail hours instead of the late-night pattern out on Forbes Avenue, so it slots neatly into a working day. The buying counter runs on identical terms at both addresses, though each has its own phone number.

Hours : Sun 10:30am–4pm, Mon–Tue 10:30am–6pm, Wed–Sat 10:30am–7pmWebsite

Used bookstores

Bottom Feeder Books

415 Gettysburg St, Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Point Breeze, on a residential block of Gettysburg Street, behind a website whose headline is three words long: used, rare, collectible. The room doubles as a gallery, and the opening reception for Danielle Goshay's Together We Name the Shadow, curated by Darian Razdar, is set for Saturday, September 5, 2026 from 6 to 8pm with the show hanging until the 26th. Online listings run to signed art monographs at three figures, a fair signal of what earns shelf room in a shop this size. Four days a week only, so this one gets planned rather than dropped in on.

Hours : Thu–Sun noon–6pmWebsite

Used bookstores

Fungus Books & Records

700 1/2 S Trenton Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15221

Over the Wilkinsburg line from Regent Square, on a quiet residential street well away from Penn Avenue and South Braddock. NEXTpittsburgh covered the launch in 2021 and quoted co-owner Ed Steck on what fills the shelves — art, fiction, poetry, small-press titles, books on film and plants, horror, old pulps and strange little pamphlets — while noting that the partners buy from the public as well as sell. Arcane City, the local events guide, placed the Pittsburgh UFO Club's conference and UFO book sale in the shop's back yard on Sunday, June 14, 2026. Vinyl shares the floor courtesy of a partner who came out of Mind Cure Records, so leave time for the bins.

Hours : Wed–Fri 11am–5pm, Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 11am–3pmWebsite

Used bookstores

Beyond Bedtime Books

1453 Potomac Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216

Down in Dormont, on the Potomac Avenue business strip beside the T line, a small independent that mixes new titles with gently used stock, plus rare and out-of-print copies, and keeps a children's room besides. The 2026 crawl lineup listed it here among thirty shops spanning six counties, which is the cleanest confirmation of a shop open for business that summer. The schedule its own site publishes is an unusual shape — a short midday window most days, one late evening — and it catches people out. Nothing on these shelves is priced for volume flipping, but the out-of-print run rewards a pass when the South Hills are already on your route.

Hours : Daily 11am–4pm, except Thu 2–8pmWebsite

Used bookstores

The Book Deli

601 E Warrington Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15210

Allentown, on East Warrington Avenue above the South Side slopes: Carnegie native Dan Burns opened a books-by-the-pound shop here in July 2026, cutting the ribbon on Saturday the 18th, the opening day of that year's book crawl, with the developer RE360 filming the morning. The building housed an A&P through the 1930s and 1940s, and Burns' great-grandfather Garner Combs worked it as a butcher, so the deli theme is family history rather than branding. The stock is mostly secondhand, with new products, local authors' titles and sundries added alongside, and the site is upfront about a selection that remains small and gets curated week by week. Shut from Tuesday through Thursday, so read the four-day week before you climb the hill.

Hours : Sun 11am–6pm, Mon 11am–5pm, Fri 4–8pm, Sat 11am–7pmWebsite

Anarchist collective bookstore

The Big Idea Bookstore & Cafe

4812 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15224

Bloomfield, on Liberty Avenue: an anarchist collective established in 2001 that houses a lending library and carries new and secondhand books, zines and other media beside a small café. Arcane City listed the fourth annual Big Idea Seed Exchange in this room for Sunday, March 22, 2026 from noon to 4pm, a fair indication of what the space is for. The secondhand shelves lean political, queer and countercultural, and the zine racks are stocked to match. Events go up on the collective's Instagram rather than its website, and that site carries no opening grid whatsoever, so send a message before you set out.

Website

Used-book chain

Half Price Books Ross Township

4932 McKnight Rd, Pittsburgh, PA 15237

North Hills, on McKnight Road about six miles up from downtown, and the nearest of three regional branches of the chain. Buying happens in person and nowhere else: no price quoted off a snapshot or a spreadsheet, government photo ID required, and you wait on the sales floor while their buyer goes through what you brought. Its branch page carried the chain's holiday markdown, up to 20 percent off across Labor Day weekend, from September 5 through the 7th, 2026. The same counter takes records, DVDs, board games, puzzles, action figures and loose LEGO, though the chain notes that not every branch buys electronics.

Hours : Daily 10am–8pmWebsite

Used-book chain

Half Price Books Monroeville

3757 William Penn Hwy, Monroeville, PA 15146

Out in Monroeville, on William Penn Highway, this is the one to work when you are already east of the city — the company's own store page puts 13.5 miles between it and the McKnight Road branch. Its own branch page ran that same three-day holiday discount over the first weekend of September 2026, the chain-wide markdown rather than anything local — the store-by-store listings carry author signings instead. Cash is the only thing the counter pays, and the offer comes after a buyer has physically seen the goods. Keep each box under the 15 to 20 pounds the company itself recommends, because it is a long walk in from that parking lot.

Hours : Daily 10am–8pmWebsite

Thrift stores & charity shops

NCJW nonprofit resale shop

Thriftique

119 51st St, Pittsburgh, PA 15201

Lawrenceville, on 51st Street: an 8,400-square-foot resale shop run by the Pittsburgh section of the National Council of Jewish Women, whose own page for the store lists books among the categories on sale. It is a general thrift operation first — clothing, shoes, jewelry, home goods, art, furniture — so the books are a corner rather than a department, and they turn over with whatever the neighborhood gives. NCJW announced a revised week that added Sundays, and the store's Instagram account was still posting staff news on August 31, 2026. Donations are taken Tuesday to Friday from 11am to 2pm and on Saturday by appointment only.

Hours : Tue–Sun 11am–6pmWebsite

Library book sales

Borough hall book sale

Green Tree Library Used Book Sale

Green Tree Municipal Building, 10 W Manilla Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15220

Out in Green Tree borough, three miles southwest of downtown, the public library empties a year of donations into the municipal building once every autumn. The volunteer roster the library published for 2026 books a preview evening on Thursday, October 15, then sale days on Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th and a further session on Sunday the 18th; the borough's own write-up of the 2024 edition put that preview at 7 to 9pm with $5 taken at the door. The tables go up to the second floor of the municipal building, which shares its West Manilla Avenue address with the library, and the trailer is unloaded on Saturday the 10th. That same roster has volunteers boxing the remainder for donation at the end of the Sunday session.

Website

Library book sales

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Book Sale

CLP Main, 4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Oakland, in the Main branch on Forbes Avenue, sharing its walls with the Carnegie Museums. The library bills this as its annual Book Sale, promising accessible pricing and special collections, and its own event page put the 2026 edition on Sunday, March 1, opening at 9:30am, with the proceeds earmarked for the Pittsburgh Book Fest. A ticketed Preview Party opens the tables the evening before with a silent auction attached, at $40 in advance on the library's own page or $50 at the door. One weekend a year is no rhythm to plan a route on, so set a reminder for late February instead of hoping to stumble into it.

Website

Scan before you buy

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Local sourcing tips

Only two operations in this region take real volume off your hands, and they work on opposite principles. Amazing Books looks at up to six book boxes per address without an appointment, on weekday afternoons from noon to six, and will come to you when a collection runs larger than that; its published want list asks for very recent literary and non-fiction bestsellers, philosophy, science fiction, fantasy and horror, graphic novels, chess, scholarly work in any field, counterculture authors and textbooks in current classroom use, while saying it generally prefers not to buy old textbooks, ex-library copies, encyclopedias, almanacs, condensed Reader's Digest, popular hardcovers more than a few years old or anything marred or stinky. Its honest caveat is that ordinary titles in good condition may fetch store credit rather than money. Half Price Books does the reverse: cash only, no appointment, no valuation from photographs or lists, photo ID at the counter and you standing there while the buyer works. Caliban wants photographs emailed over for an appraisal or a whole library, but read its news column before you load the car: cash buying is paused at the shop, credit against future purchases is what it offers instead for now, and house calls are still made by appointment. The Fungus partners buy across the counter in Regent Square.
The cheap end here runs on volunteers and one big annual date rather than a monthly circuit. The Book Cellar under the Mt. Lebanon library is open six days a week all year. Green Tree gives you a preview evening and three days over the middle weekend of October, upstairs at the borough building. Carnegie's Main library clears its donated stock in a single Sunday — March 1 in 2026, doors at 9:30am, with a ticketed party the night before and the takings pledged to the Pittsburgh Book Fest. And the Book Deli in Allentown prices by weight rather than by title, which is a different arithmetic from everywhere else on this page and worth testing with a full basket before you decide what it means for margin.
Half Price Books has three stores inside this region and the page above covers two of them. The third sits at 4000 Oxford Drive in Bethel Park, seven miles south of downtown and thirteen from the McKnight Road branch by the chain's own reckoning, on the same daily ten-to-eight schedule as the other two. If you are running the South Hills anyway — the Book Cellar in Mt. Lebanon, Beyond Bedtime in Dormont — Bethel Park closes that loop without a detour, and its own page had the local author Steven L. Orebaugh signing there on September 5, 2026, between 2 and 4pm. Robinson and the South Side, which older regional lists sometimes claim, do not appear on the chain's Pennsylvania page at all.
Opening hours are what waste an afternoon in this city. Bottom Feeder trades four days, Fungus five, the Book Deli four, and the Big Idea posts no schedule of any kind. Caliban contradicts itself: 11am to 6pm on the front page, noon to 5:30pm on the contact page, so call the shop rather than trusting either. And the trap that catches most people is Squirrel Hill, where the Forbes Avenue room observes the Sabbath, closing Friday evening and not reopening until an hour past sunset on Saturday night — the downtown room on Smithfield Street stays open normally right through, which is what makes the pair useful.
Two names in older Pittsburgh lists point at the wrong address. Eljay's Used Books left East Carson Street for Dormont in 2011, as Pittsburgh City Paper reported at the time, and the stock later traded under the Rickert & Beagle name; the used counter Dormont actually has today is Beyond Bedtime on Potomac Avenue. The other trap is the word bookstore doing too much work: The Tiny Bookstore up in Ross Township describes its 300 square feet as bestsellers, bargain books, gifts, toys and collectibles, White Whale on Liberty Avenue and the two Riverstone branches sell new, and Bradley's Book Outlet moves publishers' remainders, which are unsold new copies rather than secondhand ones. None of them will do anything for a sourcing run.
Amazing Books also trades outdoors from spring through fall, and its own home page names the pitches: the Neighborhood Flea on the first Sunday of the month at Schenley Plaza in Oakland and the second Sunday at South Side Works, the Market Square farmers market downtown on Thursdays from 10 to 2, the North Side market in Allegheny Commons Park on Fridays from 3 to 7, and the Uptown market in Mt. Lebanon on Saturday mornings from 9 to noon. None of those is a book event and the shop is one vendor among many, so treat the stall as a bonus rather than a destination — it warns in the same breath that showing up with what it calls highly permeable merchandise depends on the weather. What it does buy you is the same buyer's eye at flea-market prices, and a reason to work Oakland or the South Side on a Sunday morning before the stores open.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find cheap used books in Pittsburgh?

Start with the volunteers. The Book Cellar downstairs at the Mt. Lebanon library sells donated stock six days a week and was running a fifth off its online listings through September 2026. Green Tree stages the region's one big weekend clearance in the middle of October, up on the borough building's second floor. Carnegie's Main library in Oakland compresses its annual sale into one Sunday, which fell on the first of March in 2026. Among the shops that open all year, the Book Deli in Allentown sells by weight, and Amazing Books hands over a free used book or record worth up to $10 with every three items you buy, at either address.

Where do I sell used books in Pittsburgh?

Two counters and one specialist. Amazing Books will take up to six boxes at either the Forbes Avenue or the Smithfield Street store, Monday to Friday between noon and six, with nothing booked ahead and a house call available for anything bigger; expect store credit rather than notes for common titles, and read the want list first, because ex-library copies, encyclopedias, almanacs and dated textbooks all get refused. The chain pays money at Ross Township, Monroeville or Bethel Park, but will not price anything sight unseen, whether from a photo or a written inventory, so the whole box has to make the trip. Caliban is where a genuinely rare shelf belongs: email images and it will talk appraisals or a house call, though it says it has paused cash buying at the shop and is offering store credit for now. Do the triage before anything goes in the car, though. Shoot one loaded shelf, have BiblioScan value every spine the lens catches, and the split shows up immediately: the few worth listing yourself, and the crate that will only ever be counter fodder.

Which day is best for book hunting in Pittsburgh?

Sunday, oddly, and it is the Sabbath closure that makes the difference. Of the shops here that publish any schedule, all but one open on a Sunday, the Book Cellar being a Monday-to-Saturday operation, and the Forbes Avenue room in Squirrel Hill runs ten until nine that day rather than shutting at sunset as it does on a Friday. Saturday is the strong alternative if you are heading for the South Hills, because the Book Cellar trades until four and Beyond Bedtime keeps its midday window. Keep Tuesday back for listing instead: Bottom Feeder, Fungus and City Books are all dark that day, and the Book Deli is shut from Tuesday through Thursday.

When is the big library book sale in Pittsburgh?

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh runs the city's own one, in the Main building on Forbes Avenue in Oakland. The library's own page dated the 2026 sale to Sunday, March 1 with doors at 9:30am, and set a ticketed Preview Party for the Saturday evening before, February 28, at $40 bought ahead or $50 on the night, silent auction included and the money raised going to the Pittsburgh Book Fest. Outside the city line, Green Tree borough gives you far more hours for the same trip: the library's 2026 volunteer roster runs a preview night on Thursday, October 15 and then sale sessions across the three days that follow, upstairs in the municipal building on West Manilla Avenue. If you would rather not wait for a date, the Friends of the Mt. Lebanon library keep their Book Cellar open all year under the public library on Castle Shannon Boulevard.

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