Half Price Books

Great place for vinyl. Good prices. Clearance sections for books, records, vhs, cassettes are AWESOME!

Great place to find a reasonable priced book. If you’re selling don’t expect to get a lot of money, but it’s better than dumping the books in garbage. You’ll get something and then go buy yourself something new you need to read.

Growing up in Dallas, we had half price books back in the early 90s (possibly earlier?). I’m delighted that it’s expanded to include Chicago. If you call, they’ll let you know if they have your book in stock (or can get it from another location) and will hold it for 7 days, which is way faster than Amazon 9 times out of 10. They have a pretty decent vinyl collection, plenty of books to peruse, and generally are pretty helpful.
I almost gave them only 4 stars because frankly, the books aren’t THAT cheap, but they do have to stay in business, I know they have to pay their staff and rent, and so really, I’m just being unrealistic to think they could pull it off for any less money, given the amount of stock they carry and the volume they produce.
Thanks for being my immediate need used price salvation!

After years of dropping off books and buying books at Half Price Books, I decided no more. We will be dropping off our books to Goodwill, where we don’t get money, but we do get a tax deduction-​where we don’t have to wait to get a calculation on what the books are worth — we can just drive up and have them unload the books for us-​where we don’t have to show our ID before they calculate the worth of the books (the Half Price guy was taking a little too much info from my license???)
When the Half Price grand total of $ 24.00 was handed to me for 4 grocery bags stuffed full of books and unused DVD’s I was convinced that someone is making money on this deal and it’s not me. When I questioned the person calculating my books why the amount was so small, he held up my tattered thesaurus and smirked out «no one uses these anymore». I agreed but gazed to my brand new very hip cookbook and my complete set of Frazier dvd’s that were not fully used even once and wondered… hmmmm…they will make the $ 24.00 on these two items for sure. There were many newer books in excellent condition in my bags and well — I’m done with this rip off store. And their books for sale are not that cheap — not even close to Amazon prices. I noticed a copy of a classic paperback, A Room for One’s Own, for over $ 7.50 that was underlined. Amazon would sell this same edition for $ 1.69 plus $ 3.99 shipping. So for $ 5.68 I’ve got the same copy and oh — no underlines. I love books and supporting books stores but not when they use the public in this way.

Love Half Price Books and the service (: I always end up with more than I came for… which is good and bad. Please don’t let that comment from the underage über user discourage you from coming to this wonderful place.

I came here looking for manga after it being recommended to me. They had a good sized manga and graphic novel section, so if you are into comics this is the place to go! They could have had a bigger selection like Barnes & Noble, but the prices definitely made up for it. Apart from comics they had a huge selection of novels! They did not have a huge selection of non fiction from what I saw though. They had tons of stuff other than books like DVDs, CDs, some types of records, (not a record genius) mags and other random stuff such as phone chargers and coffee mugs. Sadly, I do not live close even though they are pretty evenly placed around the Chicago area. They could have had better prices for a used book store, but it is a great place!

Great place to go. WARNING: Do not go there without a title in mind, you will buy way more than you expected. Good place to find old movies from childhood.

Don’t let the name of this place fool you, yes, it indeed does have
many books at half price but it doesn’t stop there!
Whether you are looking for books for yourself or for your munchkin,
vinyl records galore for those of us who remember the days of vinyl.
Hey, I remember those days, listening to my favorite bands Journey
and REO Speedwagon, ah, the memories, scratchy yes, but somehow
soothing…
Old School video game systems and video games, Atari, Genesis, Nintendo,
Super NES, how I used to love to play video games like Mario Kart when
my 2 sons were little…
Lots of Journals where you can write about the secrets of your life, because
Lord knows your BFF doesn’t know everything about you.
They even had some cute little dolls called Thinker Dolls, and I found
Jesus in that group.
See, I kept telling everyone I would find Jesus one day.
Okay, sure, granted this place smells a little musty upon entering, but once
you look around you’ll definitely find something worth staying for!
Really, this place has an eclectic bunch of various merchandise but it
may be worth the time to search for something you’ve been wanting here.
Chances are you’ll find it…

This place has some of the popular books in stock like Freakonomics, Blink, Tipping Point, literary classics etc. Whereas Barnes and Noble might put certain books on sale for $ 25% off, the books here is at least 40% off regular price. However, you should understand that books here are not new, very minor cosmetic imperfection will be on the binding, cover etc. About 10% of the books here can pass as buying for gifts, the rest you should purchase for your own library. Or, if you know the person really well, and just want a thoughtful gift, it’s not a bad place to come pick up a few books for a book lover, and just explain you bought it at a used book store. There are card games here and stuffed animals, stuffed animals though have tags on them, all are in used condition, probably not even condition I would want to purchase for myself. However, I do want to point out that they are really cool, they can be zipped together and very cute. The board games and random toys at the front, they are not worth buying, the same price as Barnes and Noble but less variety, older season. They also give away boxes of free books that they cannot sell to teachers, and will load them to your car too for free. However, it is first come first serve.

Great place to sell back your book collection. You get a decent amount depending on the relativity of the book. The only downfall is that you can only sell back CD’s if they are in their original case. Otherwise it’s overall a good convenient store and sometimes you can find a textbook too.

I like books. I like cheap. And this place has cheap books which makes one happy Christine L.
While some of their things might not be as cheap as one might think, they do have a variety of books, magazines and other media for reasonable prices. They’ve got everything from journals, to calendars, books, magazines, software, records, DVDs, cassettes, cards, games, toys, Bibles, comics, and so much more! It’s a wonder how they fit everything in the space that the have. The quality of their merchandise is also fairly good with many of their items in good to new condition.
While they don’t have much space to sit and read, it’s generally not so packed so you can stand for a while leisurely while checking out the books. Whenever I need a particular book for class or for a gift (don’t judge) this is always my first stop.

I go here every week and look through the clearance CDs, tapes, records & DVDs. I can usually find 5 or 6 great CDs at $ 1 each & I can find some great DVDs for $ 1 or 2. They have some great books there, I’m really into music & sports biographies & they have large quantities to go through. Oh and tapes are $.50, pretty awesome. It’s hard to get to the clearance vinyl because you have to bend over for extended periods which kills my back or you have to sit on the floor and get stepped on by other oblivious customers. Anyways I usually spend $ 12-​$ 14 and leave with 6 CDs a few DVDs and a record or two… quite a good value for that little dough :)

I love this place. Love the atmosphere, the prices, and the cozy feeling of being in a small book store. Barnes and noble is great but this place beats their outrageous prices. There’s always someone to help you what you’re looking for.

This store has is more than just books, they have a little bit of everything. Some items include Video games, systems, music, movies, Comic books, LP’s, electronic accessories, board games, and of course books.
Most of their prices are over half the retail cost. If you shop their clearance section most items are between $ 1-​$ 3. They also offer coupons every other month or so if you sign up with your email.
This company also offers free books for schools with their «half-​pint program». They also offer 10% off any purchase to educators.
The only down side to this store is that you get very little money for most of the items you try to sell to them. But they do give you an estimate and tell you which items they will not use.
The staff at all locations are friendly and cool. This particular location often has a large selection of video and board games.

Great staff. Prices are decent, but I not recommend trading in your stuff as what they pay you for it is a complete rip off.

If you’re a buyer, it’s a great place to shop and browsef. If you’re a seller, they offer you less then peanuts. For example, I brought in the Oxford Dictionary that sells on eBay for $ 50 to $ 90 used and Half-​Price said they’d take it off my hands for $ 5. I broiught in Essential Journey (2 CDs) in excellent condition (no scratches), that I bought new and only played once. They’ll sell it for $ 7.99. They «offered» me 50 cents. Seriously.
****-stars for shopping + ** –stars for their «offers» for used books/​music = ***-stars

This place was excellent. The people are great, the diversity and the price were amazing. I really enjoyed coming here.

Great bookstore with a great selection of books, movies and other things. Prices are overall pretty good, but I usually go there to look at the movies mostly. Their prices on, «new,» movies are a bit high but on the clearance ones, there are always great deals. The only thing that is keeping me from giving this 5 stars is how little they pay you for your stuff. You’re probably better off giving it to charity or something but other than that it’s a great place overall.

This is a review of the VINYL record selection at this particular Half Price Books location…
Although I live out in Wheaton, and thus, the Bloomingdale location is «in my backyard,» I also come out to this location on occasion over the last 3 years or so. Given the frequency of my experiences at this point in time, I feel I have enough time logged now to be able to write a consistent review at this point.
Compared to the other locations I have comparable experience with (Bloomingdale, Palatine, and Naperville), I find the selection of records at this location to be pretty good. In particular, this location seems to have a slightly stronger selection of Jazz records than the others, while the Pop/​Rock and Classical selections are quite nice and comparable to the other locations.
Like all HPBs, they take all the records that come in the door, so there *are* are lot of beat up records on offer here. Thus, the «quite nice» I am giving the selection here is based not on these beat up records, but on the records you find along side these that are not all beat up. As I mentioned in my reviews for other Chicagoland HPB, tucked away in all HPBs are usually some records that can actually be in quite good shape – as good as any other record store in the Chicagoland area. If you are wiling to do the footwork to comb through the gunk to find these good ones, you can do well re: finding some nice stuff to take home. This is definitely true at this location.
One thing I I like about the records at this location is that, like Naperville and Palatine, the clearance records have nice pricing (more often .50 cents than $ 1.00). However, on the non-​clearance records, the records sometimes are priced higher than other area sellers in the greater Chicagoland marketplace, particularly the Jazz and Classic Rock records. (I have reviewed 29 other stores at this point, so this is the comparative group I am contrasting with.) The prices are as badly out of whack as the prices seem to sometimes be at the Naperville location, but they are still too high sometimes. This is true even in comparison to other Half Price Books stores in the area, for some records, as well.

I used to talk-​up this place to anyone that loves books. I have spent hours at a time here on multiple occasion.
This last visit (April 2013), I have to say I was a bit disappointed in that it looks like their prices arent as reasonable as what I am used to from this company and location
Think I might need to save the travel and ebay instead for the same books for a third to half less (even w/​shipping).