Virginia Beach keeps almost nothing secondhand near the water. The exception is a shelf, not a storefront: the Friends of the Library book nook inside the Oceanfront Area Library on Virginia Beach Boulevard, under a mile back from the sand at the 17th Street beach access. Everything else means driving inland, and the densest patch by far sits around Thalia and Town Center, where 2nd & Charles, the Friends Book Shop inside Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library and First Landing Books & Art in the antique mall on Bonney Road are spread across half a mile of one another. After that the map thins out fast: AFK Books & Records up on Shore Drive at Chic's Beach, Smith Discount Books west in Kempsville, the shared city-and-college library out at Landstown, and Book Exchange down at Red Mill where Nimmo Parkway meets General Booth Boulevard.
The three desks that buy in this city disagree about money, so sort your boxes with that in mind. AFK pays cash for the lot, takes no booking and finishes most quotes inside half an hour. Book Exchange pays no cash whatever, and its offer arrives as a store card loaded at 25 percent of what a book's cover says and 50 percent of what a disc sells for. 2nd & Charles will go either way, taking three branded totes and quoting the pile as a single total instead of a line-by-line breakdown, the credit option pitched half again above the cash one.
Check two things before you trust an older Virginia Beach roundup. Book Exchange ran a second Virginia Beach branch at 2720 N. Mall Dr in Lynnhaven for nine years and shut it on April 15, 2026 once the lease ran out, reported by WAVY on February 26, 2026 and again in the Virginian-Pilot roundup of regional openings and closings on September 1, 2026, though the chain's address page still prints that unit and its phone number. The other thing is the boundary, which does more damage to search results here than anywhere else in the state, because the rest of the region's counters lie in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake or Newport News, separate independent cities every one of them. Half Price Books is no help either, because the chain does not operate anywhere in the Commonwealth.
Record store with a book floorAFK Books & Records
4801 Shore Dr Suite D, Virginia Beach, VA 23455
Two blocks from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel at the corner of Shore Drive and Pleasure House Road, running its books A to Z beside a stock the shop counts at more than 12,000 records and more than 10,000 CDs, and pricing pre-enjoyed copies at half the publisher's list or lower. The same site says it has supported Record Store Day since 2011 and is already pointing customers toward RSD Black Friday on November 27, 2026. Selling is cash, not credit, no appointment needed and most quotes done inside thirty minutes; carry more than 30 items and you are asked in before 6pm, or 4pm on Sunday, while anything past 500 albums wants a phone call. The refusals are published too, no library discards, no encyclopedias, nothing technical over two years old, dust jackets required where a title originally carried one, and city law obliges staff to check a government photo ID and an age of 18 or over.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–9pm, Sun 11am–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresBook Exchange Red Mill
1169 Nimmo Pkwy #210, Virginia Beach, VA 23456
Red Mill Commons, at the southern end of the city, and the fourth shop of a locally owned chain trading since 2004; the operator dates this branch to June 2023 and claims the 2026 Coastal Virginia Magazine Readers' Choice title for best independent bookstore. Every book on the floor carries half its original cover price, drawn from a stock the company puts at over 100,000 books, movies and music items. Trades pay out on a store card and nothing else — one dollar for every four the cover claims on a book, half of what a disc is marked at on the shelf — and the card has to be with you for the balance to be usable at any surviving branch of the chain. Red Mill is also one of two branches taking LEGO, which comes in at $8 of credit for every pound and goes back out at $12, and the counter turns down encyclopedias, yearbooks, magazines, advance reader copies and book-club printings.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pm, Sun noon–6pmWebsite Chain trade counter2nd & Charles Virginia Beach
4000 Virginia Beach Blvd Suite 168, Virginia Beach, VA 23452
A Books-A-Million format store at Thalia, a three-minute walk east of the Central Library on this same run of boulevard, and the only national chain desk on this page. Sellers load three branded totes, hand them across and get back one number covering the whole heap rather than an itemized sheet; the choice is money now or a credit line pitched at up to 150 percent of it, and the refused categories are advance copies, textbooks, computer games and VHS. That desk stops taking boxes a full hour before the doors lock, which turns a late weekday arrival into browsing and nothing else. The store's Virginia Beach Instagram account billed Penny-A-Page for Saturday, August 15, 2026, with rewards members paying a cent per page on as many as five used titles.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–8pm, Sun 11am–7pmWebsite Friends of the Library bookstoreFriends Book Shop
Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library, 4100 Virginia Beach Blvd, Virginia Beach, VA 23452
Tucked in behind the information desk in the Central Library, volunteer-run and stocked from public donations that the group and library staff sort at a pace the Friends describe as the best part of a hundred thousand volumes a year. Posted prices are $2 for a hardback novel, $1 for a large-format paperback, $1 for an audiobook on CD and two for $1 on music discs, with rotating markdowns over the top: the shop page carries buy-one-get-one across every category bar new fiction and tote bags, ten children's titles for $1 and half off blue-card stock, holding through September 10. Blue cards flag the older and scarcer material, priced above the ordinary shelves; the Virginian-Pilot feature the group reprints on its own site follows a 1958 Paddington printing out the door at $8 and records a Kennedy-signed Profiles in Courage that fetched $2,400 online. Takings fund library programs, and the same site budgets $104,900 in community grants for 2026/2027.
Hours : Mon–Thu 10am–5pm, Fri–Sat 10am–4:30pm; closed SunWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Virginia Beach?
Begin at the Friends of the Virginia Beach Public Library. Their shop behind the information desk at Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library posts hardback fiction at $2, large-format paperbacks at $1, audiobooks on CD at $1 and music discs two for $1, and the group's shop page adds another round on top: two-for-one on everything except new fiction and tote bags, a dollar for ten children's books, and blue-card titles at half price, good to September 10. The same donated stock feeds a nook in every branch, so the Oceanfront and Joint-Use shelves work on comparable money without the drive inland. Below that, the cheapest floors are Book Exchange at Red Mill, where the operator halves every printed cover price, and AFK on Shore Drive, whose site puts pre-enjoyed copies at 50 percent off list or better.
Where do I sell used books in Virginia Beach?
Three desks, and what separates them is the currency. AFK Books & Records is the one opening a cash register: walk in without an appointment, expect a quote on the lot in about half an hour, arrive before six once the load runs past thirty items, and bring photo ID, because the city requires it and sellers must be 18. Book Exchange at Red Mill settles purely on a store card, the rate being 25 percent of cover on books and 50 percent of the selling price on discs, and it caps each seller at two bag-sized loads in a day, with bigger hauls dropped off for a callback. 2nd & Charles will do cash or credit, three totes for one lump quote, the credit worth as much as 150 percent of the cash. Triage before you load the car: photograph a shelf, let BiblioScan value the spines it can identify one by one, and the split between what you sell yourself and what you hand across a counter is settled before you lift a box.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Virginia Beach?
There is no single warehouse weekend to wait for in Virginia Beach. The Friends group behind the Virginia Beach Public Library, going since 1976, moved that model into a permanent shop at the Central Library plus a nook in every branch, and they discount in waves instead: their shop page lists buy-one-get-one across the categories, ten children's books for a dollar and half off blue-card titles until September 10. The scale sits in the sorting rather than in any one event, since the group says it and library staff work through most of a hundred thousand donated volumes a year and have raised over $2 million since 2006, so the practical advice is to drop in every few weeks and to call 757-385-0130 first, because the volunteers warn their hours can vary.
Which day is best for book hunting in Virginia Beach?
All eight entries trade Monday through Saturday, so the real question is which Saturday clock runs out first: the Friends shop stops at half past four, the Central Library, the Joint-Use Library, the Oceanfront branch and the antique mall holding First Landing all at five. Sunday is where the field actually narrows, to five and every one of them commercial — AFK and 2nd & Charles from eleven, the antique mall and the Red Mill shop from noon, and Smith, whose Sunday rests on a single directory grid — because no library branch opens and the Central building adds Sunday afternoons only in the cooler half of the year. Midweek suits anyone chasing the Friends shelves, since the shop trades Monday to Thursday while the building around it stays lit three hours longer, and the Joint-Use Library at Landstown unlocks at eight. Write off the library end of the page on Monday, September 7, Thursday, September 24 and Monday, October 12 in 2026, when the whole system closes.