Model Engineer collection

[richard jones 11Participant @richardjones11]

Hi.I have a complete collection of Model engineer from the 1950's to date.All in mint condition.Could anyone tell me if these would have any value?

[richard jones 11Participant @richardjones11]

Magazines from 1950 to present date

[SpannaParticipant @spanna]

I tried selling mine, then tried giving them away, so I am gradually throwing them away in the dustbin.

If you are lucky, you can expect £10 A VOLUME OR EVEN MORE IF YOU HAVE LOADS OF SPARE TIME AND EBAY INDIVIDUAL COPIES.

bEST OF LUCK.

[richard jones 11Participant @richardjones11]

Hello Spanner I was hoping the earlier sets might be valuable 'ish.That is great information thanks.

[Phil PParticipant @philp]

I moved house in 2008 and sold my collection of M.E. they too went back to the early 1950's

I was staggered when a guy in Australia bought them for £450 and then a further £96 for shipping.

Phil

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Sold a complete collection from 1940 to 2000 with no missing copies, got £78 for them.

Gert used to sell separate complete volumes on Ebay for £4.50 per volume but it was hard slow work.

By the time you have factored in time, listing, fees and not to mention tyre kickers it's not worth it.

Recently sold a set of Newnes Practical Engineering volumes 1 to 30 in good condition on Ebay.

Listed them start bid of £9.99 got loads of interest, can I palletise them, can I weigh them, etc etc.

End story they sold for £10.50 , two bids. In the time it took me to sort them out, place in order and take photographs and list I could have gone in the workshop and earn't 4 times what they sold for.

Got a stack of similar books on the floor at the moment, must be 4' high and come to the conclusion it's the cheapest form of heating at the moment.

[JoParticipant @jo]

1950 that would be nice.. about the year my mother was born. I've got from 1964 .

But that would split them

Jo

[Bill StarlingParticipant @billstarling10428]

I agree that, if you count your time and trouble, it's hardly worth trying to sell old MEs. Anybody want 11 complete volumes between 1949 and 1980 plus about 250 odd copies – collected from south Norfolk? (A donation to the Forncett Steam Museum in exchange would be nice.)

Bill.

[SpannaParticipant @spanna]

Its a crime to throw volumes of knowledge away. Doing stuff is so out of fashion these days

[RobboParticipant @robbo]

If you tell us where you are you might get a bite.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by Spanna on 18/04/2014 22:16:11:

Its a crime to throw volumes of knowledge away. Doing stuff is so out of fashion these days

.

Different ways to look at this.

One is it's on t'internet so easily available.

Two, do you actually use all these tomes you manage to save ? I for one have that many it's impossible to read, inwardly digest and remember.

Lastly and more relevant is that this pile of books I have sat on the floor at the moment with no chance of a home here are basically series by Newnes, Caxton plus others that if you were to rip any pages out of a book that wasn't in another one of these volumes you would be left with just two books.

How many books do you need to be shown a picture of a lathe, then a centre drill and then a boring tool ?

Just counted up, 38 books on the floor here and I'll bet what I have just described is in 30 of these.

I have a serious problem in that since the death of my wife in January I am downsizing from a very, very cluttered 4 bed double fronted Victorian house into a one room bed sit, admittedly a big one, by my own choosing and frankly I don't want the clutter. These books I am attempting to get rid off are just generic engineering text book, well out of date and well repeated in other books, nothing special at all.

Some of the other books I want to keep that are special in that they are rare, rare as in rare, hard to find, not rare as in expensive I have dealt with in other ways.

I recently bought a high speed A4 double sided scanner and it's possible to scan a 100 page book in about 2 minutes and it automatically saves as a PDF file. Unfortunately it means the book has to have the pages neatly cut out for the scanner to handle them but although this means the death of the book [ which from current experience has no value if Ebay and adverts results are taken into account ] it means it's easily stored and easily passed on to others.

The better and collectable books will still be stored in my limited book space so they are safe.

Once I can get round to getting into some of the storage sheds I will collect all the ME mags up and put them on a Euro pallet, for anyone who doesn't know they are the blue spray pained ones to denote the Euro pallet and are 1.2 metres by 1 metre. I'm guessing that the pile will be 1 to 1.5 metres high.

Fortunately my mobility scooter has forks on it and can handle 2 tonnes.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

If the mobility scooter is road legal why not take your pile of books down to the local Oxfam. They have an on-line bookstore and I have picked up a couple of old books at very reasonable prices. You know how Model engineers like a bargain!

Oxfam bookstore engine related

[richard jones 11Participant @richardjones11]

Thanks for your replies,,The volumes do not belong to me I offered to do a little research for a struggling model club to see if they would raise any funds..There must be 20 odd boxes in all .Its a free fee day on ebay on Monday I will give that a go.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by JasonB on 19/04/2014 07:42:23:

If the mobility scooter is road legal why not take your pile of books down to the local Oxfam. They have an on-line bookstore and I have picked up a couple of old books at very reasonable prices. You know how Model engineers like a bargain!

Oxfam bookstore engine related

Your idea of a bargain and mine differ slightly Jason.

What were they smoking when they came up with those prices ? given they are all donated ?

I have even offered these for free, collection only but still no takers so why should I throw even more time and money into disposing of them for someone else to make a profit ?

Don't mine anyone making a crust but they have to work at it not me.

Between the house and workshop there are 4 log burners, logs are what £5.00 – £7.00 a bag ? [ don't know, don't buy them] Couple of Newnes Practical Engineering will heat this room for a whole evening.

Some will say it's sacrilege but if they want them why don't they come and collect them ?

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