Used bookstoresTwice Sold Tales / Ballard
1708 NW Market St, Seattle, WA 98107
Same name, separate company. The Ballard shop is majority-owned by John MacBeath Watkins, with Lutton as senior partner, and the Capitol Hill store spelled the arrangement out on Instagram on August 2, 2026 while posting an old bookmark from the days when four Twice Sold Tales traded in this city — two survive. Its own site pitches a general-service stock with unusually strong science fiction and literature sections, serving Seattle since 1992, plus a tuxedo watchcat called Beau who is on the premises around the clock. Noon to 7pm daily, dark on Tuesdays.
Hours : Daily noon–7pm; closed TueWebsite Used bookstoresPegasus Book Exchange
4553 California Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98116
West Seattle's secondhand room for more than forty years, two doors north of Easy Street Records in the Alaska Junction. The shop's FAQ page records the succession without ceremony: longtime owner Fred died in June 2025, and the business passed to his widow Lanthe and their daughter Emma. Trade-ins pay in store credit only, no cash, and that credit then covers half the price of a used book or a fifth off a new one. Stock is taken in almost any hour the doors are open, with one standing exception — Sunday between 10am and 2pm, when the farmers market owns the street outside.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 10am–5pmWebsite Used bookstoresMercer Street Books
7 Mercer St, Seattle, WA 98109
A general-stock used shop five minutes from Seattle Center, with a lineage worth knowing before you walk in. Vanishing Seattle wrote on July 19, 2025 that this address has held women-owned bookstores for more than forty years — Titlewave from 1984, then a branch of Twice Sold Tales, then Debbie Sarow, who renamed it in 2009. The banner on the store's own site is three words long, buy sell trade, so the counter is open to walk-ins carrying stock. One warning: that site publishes no schedule whatsoever and the directories do not agree on one, which makes this a call-ahead stop rather than a drop-in.
Used bookstoresBallard Books
5416 20th Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107
An antiquarian and fine secondhand room in old Ballard, describing its own range as wide but weighted toward the unusual and the hard to find. It appears on the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair's confirmed exhibitor list for 2026 alongside the region's established rare-book trade, which is the cleanest available signal that stock here is graded rather than dumped. Be warned that the website gives an address, a phone number and a catalog, and nothing resembling opening times — ring 206-385-5321 before you drive over.
New and used bookstoreThird Place Books Ravenna
6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98115
New and secondhand share one floor here, with a dedicated used-book counter and a 9am-to-9pm schedule seven days a week; the events page was carrying author nights into late October 2026. Selling is by booked appointment and pays credit, not cash, with a ceiling of three grocery-sized bags or boxes per visit and every buy processed inside 30 to 45 minutes while you wait. Read the group's reject list first, because it is long and specific: audiobooks, magazines of any kind, highlighted copies, cracked spines, hardcovers missing their jackets, ex-library stock and Reader's Digest condensed volumes. Miss your slot and you cannot rebook for two months, though simply turning up with books earns a 10 percent coupon for that day.
Hours : Daily 9am–9pmWebsite New and used bookstoreThird Place Books Seward Park
5041 Wilson Ave S, Seattle, WA 98118
The same operator's south-end store, on Wilson Avenue South, keeping the identical nine-to-nine daily schedule and its own secondhand counter on the same booking system. Its calendar had author events listed into November 2026, so the room is active rather than coasting. For anyone scouting south of I-90 it pairs naturally with the Friends' Georgetown shop across the valley rather than competing with it.
Hours : Daily 9am–9pmWebsite New and used bookstoreThird Place Books Lake Forest Park
17171 Bothell Way NE, #A101, Lake Forest Park, WA 98155
Out in Lake Forest Park, past the north city line at the head of Lake Washington, this branch sits inside a mall it shares with Honey Bear Bakery and the Third Place Commons stage, both linked straight from the operator's location page. The secondhand desk runs on the terms used at the two Seattle branches — booked in advance, credit-only, three bags maximum — and this branch's phone number is the first one the company lists for selling questions. Nine in the morning to nine at night, every day.
Hours : Daily 9am–9pmWebsite Used bookstoresThe Couth Buzzard
8310 Greenwood Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103
Part bookshop, part cafe, part small stage in Greenwood, and the operator calls itself a mostly-used bookstore in exactly those words on its donations page. That page sets the terms too: intake now runs by appointment only, two boxes at a time, and what you hand over converts into credit worth 50 percent off used purchases and 10 percent off new ones. PhinneyWood covered the shop under its current owners in April 2025, when they hosted founder Theo Dzielak's own book launch, and they are honoring credit accrued under the previous ownership. Horror, sci-fi, fantasy, recent literary fiction, classics, philosophy and tabletop RPG books are what they ask for; biography, US history and thrillers are what they are already drowning in.
Hours : Mon 10am–7pm, Wed–Fri 10am–9pm, Sat 9am–9pm, Sun 9am–7pm; closed TueWebsite Used bookstoresLeft Bank Books
92 Pike St, Seattle, WA 98101
A worker-run anarchist collective on the corner of 1st and Pike, next door to The Crumpet Shop, carrying the run as "1973-2026" across the top of its own homepage. Over 10,000 new and used titles across close to seventy sections, weighted hard toward anti-authoritarian, radical and small-press material — queer and trans studies, Black studies, Native studies, labor history, disability, science fiction. The Pike Place Market directory confirms there are no bosses or managers and that decisions get made by consensus at bi-monthly meetings, which is also why nobody is going to hard-sell you anything.
Used bookstoresBLMF Literary Saloon
1501 Pike Pl #324, Seattle, WA 98101
Three levels below the Market floor, in the DownUnder, and worth the descent. J.B. Johnson has run this crammed secondhand room for twenty-six years according to the Pike Place Market directory, which also listed the shop among the Market's Black-owned businesses in a post dated January 31, 2026. The name started as a joke a house guest made about his personal collection, cleaned up into initials. Open 10am to 5pm every day of the week, and the counter takes used books for cash or credit.
Hours : Daily 10am–5pmWebsite Used bookstoresLamplight Books
1514 Pike Pl #14, Seattle, WA 98101
Up at street level in the Sanitary Market, a quieter and tighter proposition than the rooms downstairs: literature, philosophy, poetry and children's books, with the Market's own directory naming the specialization as vintage, classic and out-of-print. It was one of six bookstores the Market wrote up in a piece dated March 15, 2025. Ten to five, seven days, and the shop posts new arrivals to Instagram, which is the quickest way to see what landed without making the walk.
Hours : Daily 10am–5pmWebsite New and used bookstoreCharlie's Queer Books
465 N 36th St, Seattle, WA 98103
Fremont's LGBTQ+ specialist, opened by Charlie Hunts in 2023 after a run of pop-ups off a mirror-tiled book cart, and predominantly a new-book shop — but it keeps a secondhand section of its own and asks readers to bring queer titles in to sell. Those used listings sit at a flat $10 apiece, which keeps the sums simple in both directions. Its events calendar was booked through September 2026 with trivia afternoons, a writing club and a book group run jointly with King County Library, so the room has real foot traffic. Treat it as a specialist source: what surfaces here is out-of-print queer press, not stray bestsellers.
Used bookstoresOpen Books: A Poem Emporium
108 Cherry St, Seattle, WA 98104
A poetry-only bookstore — one of just four in the United States, according to the Pioneer Square business association — tucked into the Good Arts Building on Cherry Street. The shop says it holds more than 10,000 titles on the floor, and its online catalog carried 1,509 secondhand listings on September 1, 2026 alongside separate Rare and Half-Price shelves, so the used side is no token rack. Four and a half days a week, though: Wednesday to Saturday noon to 5pm, Sunday noon to 4pm. For a reseller this is a depth stop rather than a volume one — small-press and out-of-print verse is where anything interesting hides.
Hours : Wed–Sat noon–5pm, Sun noon–4pmWebsite New and used bookstoreBookTree
609 Market St, Kirkland, WA 98033
Out in Kirkland, up Market Street from the marina, this is the Eastside town's own locally owned independent, mixing new stock with what it calls gently-used and keeping a separate children's room at the back. Its blog was posting on November 14, 2025 about heading into a ninth holiday season, and a community GoFundMe has been running alongside the till for years — read that as a small operation, not a failing one. The hours are narrow and the closed days are the trap: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 11:30am to 5:30pm, with Thursday and Sunday dark.
Hours : Mon–Wed, Fri–Sat 11:30am–5:30pm; closed Thu and SunWebsite