Where to buy used books in Reno

Updated 9/3/2026

Six of the seven stops below sit south of the Truckee, in the strip-mall and light-industrial grid between the university and the airport. Grove Street, Vassar Street, Greg Street, Moana Lane and the Kietzke corridor all fall inside roughly two miles of one another, and the Reno Town Mall at the southern end of South Virginia holds the sale room the Friends of Washoe County Library run nine days at a time. The seventh is the outlier, a small shop over a pizza place on Mae Anne Avenue, five miles northwest, on the slope below Peavine Mountain. Every stop is inside the Reno city limits; Sparks, immediately east, contributes nothing to this list.

One counter on this page pays cash for what a walk-in seller carries. Grassroots Books looks at your load between 9 and 11 in the morning from Monday to Thursday, quotes on the spot, and grants appointments outside that window only for a published set of categories. LeRue Press advertises trade instead and says it will honor credit slips issued by a Sparks store that closed years ago. The rest live on gifts: Thistle & Nightshade states outright that it runs no buy-back program and fills its used shelves from customer donations, the charity floors take donations only, and two addresses cap the load outright, Vassar Street counting bags by the vehicle and the Friends counting them at the mall door.

Any roundup of this city dated 2024 or earlier will walk you into a locked door. Sundance Books and Music, the shop in the Levy Mansion that every visitor guide led with, served its final customers on Friday, May 31, 2024, KUNR having reported it the day before, and the 121 California Avenue address has been a dead end for books ever since. The Book Gallery served the Reno-Sparks area for 26 years and its remaining shelves ended up at LeRue Press, by the buyer's own account. And the safety net US scouts usually plan a Nevada trip around does not exist: Half Price Books has no store anywhere in the state, its own finder counting 116 branches spread over 19 states, none of them this one.

Spot map

The best spots

Used bookstores

Grassroots Books

660 E Grove St, Reno, NV 89502

A warehouse of a shop on East Grove Street next to the Costco, traced on its own About page from a garage near Seattle in 2003 to a Reno floor it puts at more than 40,000 books. The yard outside is what makes the drive worth it: nothing there is priced above a dollar, and a Facebook post of May 2, 2026 sets out the rhythm, fresh stock laid down each Monday, around 10,000 volumes out by midweek, then grocery bags filled for $5 on Sunday before the cycle starts again. Selling is a drop-in from 9am to 11am, Monday through Thursday, with appointments granted outside those hours only for releases of the past two years, vinyl, comics and manga, local interest, firearms and military, UFO material, vintage, and anything likely to fetch $50 or more; the shop states it usually pays $7 for hardcover fiction published in the previous 60 days and roughly 20 cents each for comics, Blu-rays and records. A February 24, 2026 post about a delivery of shrink-wrapped Easton Press volumes gives the unstickered rate as $4.99 hardcover and $2.99 paperback, and the FAQ says store credit comes on a gift card at the identical figure to cash.

Hours : Mon–Sat 9am–7:30pm, Sun 9am–6pmWebsite

Library book sales

Friends of Washoe County Library Book Sale

Reno Town Mall, 4001 S Virginia St, Reno, NV 89502

A nine-day sale, Saturday to Sunday, in the unit beside the Sierra View branch inside the Reno Town Mall, staffed by an all-volunteer group founded in 1980 that says it has returned more than $2.6 million to the county system. Dates go up far ahead: the closing window of 2026 is October 17 to 25, open 10am to 4pm, preceded by a members-only evening on Friday, October 16 from 3pm to 6pm, and five further windows are already fixed for 2027. The same page sets out house rules that matter if you scout for resale — no more than one box in the aisles per dealer, a storage area at the back for the rest, all scanners silenced, and the room held to 80 shoppers at a time, with volunteers walking the floor. The listing the group puts out through the mall prices hardcovers and large paperbacks at $1 and prices newer or more valuable titles one by one, and the closing Sunday of every window is Bag Day, when the Friends hand you the bag and charge $5 to fill it.

Hours : October 17–25, 2026, 10am–4pm daily; members October 16, 3pm–6pmWebsite

Printer and used-book floor

LeRue Press Bookstore

280 Greg St #10, Reno, NV 89502

A commercial printer and small publisher on West Greg Street that keeps a secondhand floor inside the same 2,200 square feet as its bindery, stocked when it took over part of the inventory of The Book Gallery after that shop wound up a 26-year run. Its own description leans on science fiction and fantasy, romance, westerns and adventure, with political, celebrity and inspirational shelves beside them, and it says it will accept and honor the trade credit the older store issued. Doors are open 10am to 4:30pm Monday to Friday, Saturday by arrangement and never on Sunday, so this is a weekday stop rather than a weekend one. The unit is still filling up: a May 3, 2026 post on the LeRue Press Facebook page welcomed Battle Born Collectibles, opening on May 9 at the same suite with vintage pieces, figures, diecast, books and media.

Hours : Mon–Fri 10am–4:30pmWebsite

Indie and used bookshop

Thistle & Nightshade

5365 Mae Anne Ave #A38, Reno, NV 89523

Northwest Reno, on the upper floor of the Westridge Offices above the Pizza Plus, reached from the back parking lot and signposted by a glowing Bookshop sign; the owners' own directions run to that level of detail, down to which end of Building A to aim for. Alyx and Annie started by listing their own collections online in early 2023, moved to Mae Anne Avenue in 2024, and write on their About page that the shop took over the suite next door in 2026 to add a community room, which they rent out at $15 an hour. The FAQ is blunt about how stock arrives: no buy-back program, because the shop says it is not big enough for one, so most of the used inventory comes from customer donations, dropped off during opening hours rather than left in the shared hallway. Independent presses and self-published authors get shelf space here alongside the secondhand, and the same page lists the shop as an affiliate seller with Biblio for used copies bought online.

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

All-volunteer charity store

Thrift & Gift on Vassar

1701 Vassar St, Reno, NV 89502

Under a mile north of Grassroots Books, a charity floor whose shop page names books for every age among the apparel, housewares, linens, toys, jewelry and a section of antiques and collectibles. It is staffed and managed by the members of The 1701 Group, the name adopted by the former Assistance League of Reno-Sparks, and the store writes that it took Best awards in 2025 from both the Reno Gazette-Journal contest and the Best of Sierra Nevada contest. Opening is 10am to 4pm Tuesday to Saturday, donations are received until 3pm on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday only, and the limit at the dock is ten bags or boxes per vehicle with nothing over 25 pounds. Better material is siphoned off to online auctions rather than the shelves — the group posted one running September 4 through 6, 2026 on estatesales.org, with a picker's sale of the leftovers on Wednesday, September 9.

Hours : Tue–Sat 10am–4pmWebsite

All spots by type

Thrift stores & charity shops

Animal-welfare charity store

SPCA of Northern Nevada Thrift Store

75 E Moana Ln, Reno, NV 89502

A quarter mile north of the Reno Town Mall, on East Moana Lane, where the animal shelter lists books as one of its departments beside pet goods, apparel, shoes, housewares, furniture and accessories, and runs a low-cost vaccine clinic through a separate door of the same building. The charity sets aside every Thursday for what it calls Thrifty Thursdays, taking half off one surprise department on top of markdowns it advertises as reaching 75 percent, with free lemonade and pup cups at a self-serve station. Its Facebook page shows the routine holding up: an August 21, 2026 post pushed the daily tag sales, and one five days later put crafts at half price for Thursday, August 27, 2026. Encyclopedias, magazines and newspapers are turned away at the donation door.

Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 11am–6pmWebsite

For-profit thrift store

Savers

3800 S Kietzke Ln Ste 250, Reno, NV 89502

A commercial reseller rather than a charity, in the shopping center at Kietzke and Peckham a short hop from the mall, and its own page for this branch names books in the aisles next to dinnerware, accessories, housewares and electronics. The chain takes donations at the same address on behalf of a local nonprofit partner it says it pays for the goods, and the list of what it accepts here includes books and media. Two standing offers are posted for the store: 20 percent off a following purchase once you hand goods over at the donation bay, and a Tuesday reduction of 30 percent for shoppers of 55 and above, red-tagged new merchandise excluded. The Reno Gazette-Journal reported on September 11, 2025 that Peckham Square, the center it sits in, had been bought by the group behind the former Jones West Ford lot next door, then wrote on April 20, 2026 that the tenants there hold long-term leases and the center will keep trading for years.

Hours : Mon–Sun 10am–8pmWebsite

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

Exactly one address here pays out for a carton, and it works nothing like a chain buyback. Grassroots wants you there between nine and eleven on a weekday morning, quotes on the spot, refuses advance reader copies, Harlequin, Reader's Digest condensed volumes and Windows Vista books outright, and will not pay for anything it knows is headed straight to the dollar yard; email is the route to an appointment for rare or recent material, and house calls run to a 50-mile radius. LeRue Press advertises trade and says it will honor paper credit from The Book Gallery; it publishes nothing about paying cash. Thistle & Nightshade takes gifts only, and asks you to carry them in during opening hours instead of leaving cartons in the shared hallway. Two of the charity floors cap what you can leave: a maximum of ten sacks or cartons per carload on Vassar Street, and eight without a booking at the Friends' door inside the mall, with a phone call required above that.
The cheap end of the Reno market is genuinely cheap, and it clusters in one direction. Grassroots holds its whole outdoor yard to a dollar or under seven days a week, weather allowing, and makes Sunday a $5 bag day. The library Friends charge a flat dollar for anything hardbound or oversized in paperback, out of a room their own sale listing sizes at roughly 30,000 books, tag whatever is newer or more valuable one title at a time, and finish each run with a Bag Day at the same $5. On Moana Lane the SPCA advertises reductions up to 75 percent and hands a department half off each Thursday, while Savers on Kietzke posts a standing Tuesday discount for anyone 55 or over.
Geography does most of the planning for you. Grassroots, Vassar Street and Greg Street make a triangle roughly a mile and a half across, east of the Kietzke corridor, and the Reno Town Mall, Moana Lane and the Kietzke thrift store sit a few blocks apart a mile and a half further south, so the six southern stops fold into two loops rather than six separate errands. Mae Anne Avenue is the exception and needs its own run, about five miles northwest of Grove Street. Thursday puts the most doors in play, since all six permanent stops open together: Vassar Street and Mae Anne Avenue both close on Monday, Greg Street keeps weekday hours with Saturday only by arrangement, and the mall sale is dark except during its nine-day windows.
Several names still floating around local search results will not sell you a used book here. Sundance Books and Music shut on May 31, 2024 after 39 years, as KUNR and the Reno Gazette-Journal both reported that month, and the Levy Mansion on California Avenue went with it. The Better World Books address on Industry Circle in the north of the city is the company's western distribution hub and the drop point it publishes for donations sent by mail, not a shop floor; This Is Reno covered the 140,000-square-foot building when EDAWN announced it. Three more secondhand names that surface on searches for this city are outside Washoe County altogether: Browsers Corner, which the Friends of the Carson City Library run at 711 East Washington Street, Keynote Used Records & Books in South Lake Tahoe, California, and, over the Sierra, Word After Word Books on Donner Pass Road in Truckee.
Four further bookshops trade in the city without publishing anything about buying from the public, so budget them as browsing rather than sourcing. One More Chapter took the ground floor of the 1932 Art Deco post office, let to independent tenants as The Basement; it opened on Saturday, April 26, 2025, the date of Independent Bookstore Day, with KOLO 8 putting its first-time owner at 22. The landlord's directory calls those shelves new reads, local picks and hard-to-find titles, and KUNR quoted proprietor Camryn Hartman on August 25, 2025 on a mix of mostly fantasy and romance with some mystery and young adult. The Radical Cat, a feminist bookstore, cat adoption center and community space, took its Midtown premises on South Virginia Street in a move the Nevada Sagebrush wrote up on January 31, 2025, and the Sierra Nevada Ally profiled the shop again on April 14, 2026. Hollow and Quill at 300 South Wells Avenue specializes in romance, mystery, thriller and horror, and KUNR covered it on June 1, 2026. Golden Owl Bookshop works out of a converted box truck, by its own account, which makes it an event to catch rather than a door to walk through.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find cheap used books in Reno?

Head for East Grove Street first. The outdoor yard at Grassroots Books prices nothing above a dollar, all day and every day, weather permitting, and a store post of May 2, 2026 describes fresh stock going down each Monday and around 10,000 volumes on the tables by midweek, with grocery bags filled for $5 every Sunday. When the library Friends unlock their room in the Reno Town Mall, their sale listing sets a dollar on hardbacks and the bigger paperbacks out of roughly 30,000 books, with newer or more valuable titles priced individually, and the last Sunday of each nine-day run is a $5 bag day. Between those two, the animal-shelter shop on East Moana advertises reductions of up to 75 percent plus one half-price department each Thursday, and the Savers branch at Kietzke and Peckham cuts 30 percent on Tuesdays for over-55s.

Where do I sell used books in Reno?

One address on this page pays cash, one advertises trade, and the rest take donations only. Grassroots Books takes walk-ins between 9am and 11am, Monday through Thursday, usually paying $7 for hardcover fiction from the previous 60 days and about 20 cents apiece for comics, Blu-rays and vinyl, and it will schedule outside those hours for recent releases, manga, gun books, local interest and anything that might clear $50; store credit is loaded onto a gift card at the same value as the cash offer. LeRue Press on Greg Street advertises trade and says it honors slips written by The Book Gallery, while Thistle & Nightshade tells sellers outright that it has none. With the chain finder showing no Half Price Books in this state, nearly everything you source in Reno ends up on a marketplace instead of across a counter, which makes home triage the whole game: stand a shelf up, let BiblioScan work out what each spine it identifies is worth on resale today, and you can see the few worth putting up on Amazon yourself and the boxful that belongs at a donation bay.

When is the Friends of the Library sale in Reno?

Washoe County's library Friends hold theirs inside the Reno Town Mall at 4001 South Virginia Street, in the unit next to the Sierra View branch, and each one lasts nine days from a Saturday to a Sunday, 10am to 4pm. Their published calendar closes 2026 with October 17 to 25, opened the previous evening between 3pm and 6pm on Friday, October 16, for members; you can sign up at the door, at rates the group lists from $15 for seniors, students and library staff to $40 for a family. Five more are already dated for 2027: January 9 to 17, March 13 to 21, May 22 to 30, July 31 to August 8 and October 16 to 24, each with its own members-only evening the previous Friday. Outside those windows the room is closed to shoppers, though the group still receives donations there from 10am to noon, Tuesday to Saturday.

Which day is best for book hunting in Reno?

Thursday, the one weekday when all six permanent stops trade at once. Grassroots is inside its Monday-to-Thursday buying window that morning, the shelter shop on East Moana runs its half-price department, and the printer on Greg Street is on a weekday schedule that closes at 4:30pm before the weekend takes it out of play. Sunday is the opposite trade-off: Greg Street and Vassar Street are dark, but the dollar yard on East Grove switches to $5 a bag, Mae Anne Avenue opens at ten, and if a Friends window happens to be closing that day, so does the room in the mall. Avoid Monday, which takes out both the charity floor on Vassar Street and the bookshop on Mae Anne Avenue.

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