Amazon sellers swarm as all Hastings Books closes all stores this week.
Hastings Entertainment is the biggest chain store you’ve never heard of.
Until this month, they operated 123 stores in 20 states, operating book & music (and more) stores exclusively in smaller markets. (I forget where I read this, but I heard they only opened stores in towns of fewer than 120,000 people).
Good news and bad news about Hastings
Bad news: Hastings is by far my favorite chain store in the country (for more reason than one), and they’re going out of business.
Good news: They’re liquidating their inventory, and every book and CD is on sale now for 90% off.
My visit to a Hastings before it closed
Today I stumbled upon a Hastings days before it closed.
All used books and CDs were 90% off. Goldmine.I came out with over 90 books and 30 CDs in the 2.5 hours before they closed. I don’t have any projected profits to share because I wanted to get this article up, but let’s just say it was definitely worth my time. And I’ll be back tomorrow when they open tomorrow to finish the job.
Seriously, it’s crazy. As an example, I got over a dozen sealed audiobooks for 10 cents each. (This was an over 99% off discount. Don’t ask me how that happened).
On my way out, the cashier told me several things:
- All Hastings stores will be closed by October 31st.
- All of them are liquidating their merchandise (presumably at the same 90% off prices).
- Many of the stores are already closed.
- “Most” of the stores will be closing this week (before the 31st corporate deadline).
That means you may only have a few days to capitalize on this.
How do you know if there’s a Hastings near you?
There probably is, and you don’t even know it.
They have over 100 locations in 20 states.
Every store closing: Very time sensitive
Can you tell I wrote this whole article in 15 minutes? I wanted to get this up, fast.
So I’m told, the majority of stores will close in the next few days.
In the meantime: They are a complete, total, absurd Amazon-profits goldmine.
Get on this right now.
In Memorium: A great book source and a great bookstore
Despite the deals, I’m actually really sad about this.
For one, Hastings has always been a great source of Amazon inventory, even without the 90% off discount.
Two, its the end of an era as my favorite chain store in the country (independent of the inventory they provided) has closed. It was just a great place to get cool books and music.
The hypocritical irony of mourning the loss of a store that was likely brought to its demise by my chosen business (Amazon) is not lost on me. But I’m still sad.
-Peter Valley
Hastings closing is NOT due to AZ, but mismanagement to new buyers in 2014.
Independent book stores are doing well in USA, and thriving. Borders closing had NOTHING to do with AZ also, but again mismanagement.
Super good deals? Hardly. I went to 4 stores, most used items were slim, mostly new books, and STILL overpriced even with 40-60% off. Even most games were 25-50% over AZ prices, so with closing discount – no profit there.
Glad you did ok. Had fun typing all those isbn’s or scanning covers?
Scraping the stickers was sort of a nightmare, but the stores are basically abandoned at this point so we weren’t concerned about getting in trouble for the sticker-scraping.
Your perspective on independent book stores is a little off – at least for those of us in the industry. Our numbers have dropped approximately 15,000 stores since 2004 – not exactly what I’d call thriving. The survivors are an amazing lot. They survivied the era of the megastore and continue to thrive in the face of the most mega of the megastores (and, yes, that is Amazon).
Really? Lol.
“Though it might seem that bookstores are closing at a rapid pace, there are actually still an impressive amount of bookstores in the U.S.; about 10,800 in all, ranging from small, independent retailers to major chains, according to census data from 2002. Yet that number is considerably lower than the number recorded in 1997 when there were 12,363 stores, a 12.2% drop.”
Unfortunately none in my state or anywhere within a close enough driving distance to make it a worthwhile trip.
Bummer! I had never heard of them so wasn’t optimistic that there was one close by. I guess if you live in the midwest, you’re in for a drive. My closest is a 5 hour drive away, and i don’t have the time this week to steal away.
Good luck to those who have one near!
I’ve been pulling from Hastings for the past month..in fact most of the loot i sent in is already sold out at Amazon..i was blessed with 2 hastings stores within 35 miles of each other..I scored on baby toys, weird Marvel stuff, harry potter, star trek and star wars stuff..sadly, some of the merchandise still wasn’t profitable on amazon at 80% off..which is why they’re gone..
i always used them for business books to ship to Amazon when they had their sales..i’d pay $5 for a book to sell at $25..
fortunately, my other favorite store is still open..Sam’s club..when i find something there, and you can every day, i order a bunch on line..great store for retail arbitrage..so is the clearance section at walmart
I didn’t even mention all the toy, vinyl, and other random deals throughout the store. Pretty incredible.
@Russ. Do you pull from Sams in categories other than Health and Beauty and Grocery?
Biggest frustration scouting at Hastings is their price stickers cover the barcode so you can’t use a scanner. Have to enter every ISBN manually.
I worked a tag team approach with me pulling books, another person scraping the stickers with a Scotty Peeler, then me scanning. A lot had to be keyed in. And towards the end I bought about 1/3 of the books blind. They were so cheap it was worth it.
We were traveling through Colorado three weeks ago and ran across a Hastings closing that was at 90 percent off. We got brand new sealed text books, new games, toys and dvds. The textbooks were priced high but I guess no one ahead of us did the math that a book priced 100.00 was only ten dollars AND they had under 50,000 ranking AND were priced on Amazon over $150.00!! I didn’t imagine when we walked (ok ran) in there that we would find so much loot! Of course that put us behind in our travel that day and we had to go over the mountain pass in a heavy snow storm at night, met the snow plow coming up while we were going down. …. So much fun and so much scariness in one day! I think the weight in the back from our Hasting Heist kept us from going over the mountain edge!!!
I made four trips to the local Hastings, first two trips, hours of look-ups netted 150 books, third trip they dropped the toys to 80% off and I bought 200.00 worth, not great toys and a bit of a gamble but I went for it. On close out day they handed out hvy duty trash sacks so I went through everything one more time and looked at anything VG or LN and was related to self help, entitlement groups or well ranked coffee table books, picked up another 75 at .10 per, Then I hit the cd’s, at first I looked some up then shifted to most expensive in new cases. Picked up 300 at .01 each ( the discount receipt was about 12 feet long. lol ) half of the cd’s are worth sending in but I will sort them one more time and decide about the higher ranked ones, probably send in about 100 or so.
I wish I had thought about bringing my scotty peeler, thumbnail was getting sore that last day.
Anyway, thanks Peter for the book selling content. I’ve been at this a little over a month, shipped in about 9 boxes of books, three of toys and some cd’s. You, Reesy resells and Jim Pickins got me mapped out on books and the sales are starting to roll in.
None in mi or anywhere near. No wonder I’ve never heard of them. 😜👍
Peter need your advice if you get this in the next half hour. Im at a Hastings and it closes today. Trash bag of books is 5 bucks. No time to scan as barcodes are covered. What types of books do you suggest I grab at? Thank u much if you get this in time.
Get them all. I’ll buy anything blind if it comes in at less than 10 cents a book.
Took your advice. Thank you for the reply. I grabbed a lot of good books. Kid in front of me got 1100 records for 26 bucks.
Tried to get them to sell books by the shelves or pallet full but the employees were a bit pissy. And wouldnt. Said they wanted everyone outta the store and would donate the rest.
Thanks for the heads up email with this post about Hastings. Almost forgot.
There’s a reason that the stuff is still there: unsellable. Marmaduke really socked it to Wishnick. The stockholders got hosed on the buy-out but I’m sure they are glad they saw it go private.
I had a much different experience: Tons and tons of great books and CDs for 10 cents each. Over 1k expected profit.
If you’re near a hasting see if you can snag the copy of NCAA 2014 they had as a rental, good return on it.
Man, once a year I go on vacation to visit family in as little town in Arizona and they have a Hastings there. I tried to source a little, but with the wife and two kids wanting to get to the hotel there was never time.
I did almost buy a replica toy from Portal 2 there that had a decent return, but the security tag they used on it had damaged the box so I couldn’t sell as new.
Looks like the one I went to is already closed, so not even the chance for a last minute 5 hour drive for the hell of it this weekend.
I loved the Dr Who and Funko clearance at Hastings! Those have strong fanbases and we’re in Q4.
Well, here’s my report. Yesterday, I took the day off of my regular job and drove 3.5 hours to a Hastings out of state and immediately ran into the problem of stickers on the bar codes. Also, it was obvious someone else had already been there, because some of the labels had been messed with (Peter, was that you?). I didn’t get too many books, but did get a bunch of toys and a ton of DVDs and other odds and ends. Overall, I’m glad I went, so thanks for the heads up, Peter!
3.5 hours is some serious dedication! That’s awesome.
It sounds like most Hastings now are doing 10 books for $1, in which case I would advise buying blind and scanning when you get home. Hard to lose money at 10 cents a book if you know how to avoid the obvious duds.
Took a couple hours drive to the closest and it was already closed forever by Wednesday. Second closest one was good. Ran to a third one on Fri morning and it was already fully closed too, so went back to the second and cleaned up some more without bothering to scan, at almost nothing per item. Ended up choosing almost all media and some action figures. Books were very very picked over, almost all was used dud fiction. Long driving but overall a beneficial trip, thanks for the heads up Peter.
Took Peter’s advice and bought 1,100 books for $110 without scanning–just trusting my instincts. Pretty much stuck with non-fiction focusing on the kinds of books I would scan at a library sale. I’m sure I’ll make money but my caution would be to consider the other costs besides just the price of the books: namely labor, transportation and physical space. When you start to process a large quantity with a high percentage of duds, you have to have a system in place to physically handle it. Kind of like when someone is selling a large collection that has only a few gems. I want to just buy the gems and they want me to make them an offer for the whole collection. I have to explain that my offer for the whole collection will be less because that’s more work for me to haul their junk to the nearest dumpster. At least with my Hastings haul there’s a used bookstore in my town that will buy most of the ones that aren’t worth selling on amazon.