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Notations used in this guide:
* = There's a copy of this book in the AAUGH.com
reference library.
(HB) = The copy in the reference library is
a hardcover (may not be noted on books available solely in
hardcover.)
CB = Charlie Brown
Copyright 1992-2005 Nat Gertler
All rights reserved.
This is a work-in-progress, and may contain errors or
omissions. We accept no responsibility for any actions taken
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Hunting for Peanuts books online
Created April 21, 2001, Updated August 30th, 2001.
If you do go Peanuts book hunting in used bookstores
and flea markets, here are some tips:
- Always carry a list of the books you already have with you. Many
Peanuts books have similar titles or look similar, so it's easy to
accidentally buy a book that you already have, or to pass over a book
that you need.
- If you're looking at a lot of books and don't have a lot of time,
don't try to read every title. Instead, glance quickly over the book
spines. If you're used to looking at Peanuts books, the fonts that
the publishers usually use for the titles should jump right out.
- The most common places to find Peanuts books in a used bookstore
are in the humor, children, and art sections.
- Peanuts-hunting in a foreign bookstore where you don't speak the
language? Bring a picture of Charlie Brown and Snoopy with you, and
show it to the clerk. That should cut through any language barrier.
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Used bookstores are wonderful, and flea markets are great fun. If you really
want to grow your Peanuts book collection, however, the best place to start
shopping is right where you are now, at your computer. The number of books
available through online sources is phenomenal. Here are some tips that should
make your online shopping fruitful.
- Don't try buying everything at once!
It's easy to be overeager in your collecting, and try to buy every different
Peanuts book you come across. If you have an infinite supply of time and
money, go for it! Otherwise, it's best to realize that there are over a
thousand different Peanuts and Peanuts-related books out there. Focus on
building one set (such as the Peanuts Parade set) or type of books (strip
reprints, or coloring books, or whatever excites you most) and then spread
out from there once you've collected most of those. I'm not saying you
shouldn't eventually try to collect everything (hey, I don't have 700+
Peanuts books because I'm shy about buying things!), nor that you should
walk away from interesting books just because they aren't in the focus
of your collection. Just don't spend a lot of time or money on things that
don't really interest you because it has Charlie Brown on the cover.
- Check to see if the book is in print first
I cannot count the times that I've seen people bidding more for a used
copy of a book than they could have bought a new one for. It always saddens
me. The first place you should go to find out if it's in print is my AAUGH.com
shop, of course! I put a lot of work into finding out what books are
currently available to bookstores and listing them there. People often
assume that because a book is part of an older line, it's no longer in
print -- but there were Peanuts Parades in print until 1997, and there
are still some Fawcett Crest titles available!
- Know what it is you're looking for
That's what this guide is for. It gives you not only lists of titles,
but also warnings about books with similar titles that may not be quite
what you want.
- Some good used bookstores online
I've bought hundreds of books online. I've had some good dealings, some
bad ones (many more good than bad, I'm pleased to say!) Here are some places
that I've found to be particularly useful:
- Powells.com has
a large selection, and the books conditions are well-described. Often
they have a number of copies at different prices.
-
 Half.com is
an interesting site. It's not actually a single store, but rather a service
through which many individuals sell their stuff. Prices are actually
the cheapest that I've seen online (partly because they encourage
their vendors to sell for half cover price, partly because the vendors
are competing with each other), and I've found some surprising things
there. The downside is that if you buy multiple books, you do have to
pay full shipping for each one, as they will be shipping from different
vendors. However, the shipping price is less than most bookstores' one-book
shipping price, so it's really not that bad.
-
 Alibris once
was the most expensive online used bookstore I'd run into. Recently,
their prices have come down, although their real strengths remain. Many
online used bookstores are just listing the content of their physical
bookstore; order something online, and you may well discover that they've
already sold that book and hadn't gotten around to updating the database
yet. Alibris, however, keeps a major portion of their books for sale
only online. When you order a book that's marked as being in that stock,
you know you'll get it. Plus, because their prices are high, they often
have books that other, lower-priced bookstores have already sold their
copies of. I've found things at Alibris that I've seen nowhere else.
When you're desperate for a specific title, this is a good place to check.
- Try an online book search engine
There are sites that can search through the catalogs of a number of used
bookstores. The heavy-hitter in this category, however, is BookFinder.com,
which manages to index not only many bookstores, but even indexes the other
index sites. If a book is available anywhere online, odds are that BookFinder
will find it for you. It's index is sometimes a bit out of date, however;
BookFinder may link to a specific book, but when you get to the store's
own site, that book has been sold and is no longer listed. It also misses
some of the books that are listed on the site. Still, it's a powerful tool
when you're hunting for something.
- Ask other Peanuts fans for help The best online place for contacting
other Peanuts fans is the Usenet newsgroup alt.comics.peanuts. Peanuts fans
hang out there. Post a message listing the books you're looking for, and
odds are good that someone will be able to help you with some of them.
- Use online auctions
Online auctions are lousy ways to hunt for a specific book. Any one book
(particularly any uncommon book) is not likely to be being auctioned at
any given moment. Even if you find the book you're looking for, you then
have to compete with others to get to buy the book, and you won't know
if you got it or how much you're paying until the auction is over.
What online auctions are great for, however, is browsing. There
is only one online auction worth going to for Peanuts books: eBay  .
At any given time, there are literally hundreds of Peaunts books being
auctioned off. All other auctions sites are so small compared to eBay that
it isn't even worth your time going there.
Some tips for finding the Peanuts books on eBay:
- Yes, there is a special section on eBay for Peanuts-related auctions
(Collectibles:Art, Animation & Photo Images:Animation Characters:Peanuts)
but most of the Peanuts books aren't there! Instead, they're scattered
throughout various book and comic book sections.
- Use eBay's Search function to search for key terms, such as Charlie
Brown, Snoopy, and Charles Schulz, combined with
words like book, hardcover, paperback, and so
on. (The search feature does let you build this-word-or-that-word
style queries; use the help feature to learn how.)
- Use the Search title and description option; many of the key
words that you're searching for won't be in the title of the auction,
but will be in the description.
- If you search for Peanuts book, you will get a huge list of
items, most of which won't be Peanuts book. Unfortunately, the word peanuts shows
up in many auctions, because people note that they pack items using packing
peanuts!
- If you search for Peanuts Parade, you will find links to a lot
of things marked Peanuts on Parade. These aren't the books you're
looking for; rather, they're Peanuts statuettes.
- People have real trouble spelling Schulz's last name, even when it's
on a book that's right in front of them. Searching for common misspellings
such as Schultz may help you find books that other searchers have
missed.
- Register with eBay. That way, once you design a query that works for
you, you can save it as one of your Favorite Searches. This will
save you from having to re-enter your query every time.
- If you're looking for a specific book, create a Favorite Search just
for that title. Use the email me option, and eBay will email you
letting you know when someone has put that book (or some other auction
including all the words in the title) up for bid.
- Check bookstores before bidding
If your browsing finds you a book that you want to bid on, don't place
your bid immediately! Instead, check the bookstores listed above. You don't
want to bid $20 for a book that you could get for $5 through half.com!
- Don't trust descriptions!
The descriptions of books in online bookstore catalogs are sometimes not
great, and in auctions they can be plain horrible. The most common problem
is sheer vagueness; people who aren't heavily into Peanuts books think
that saying that the book is A Charlie Brown Christmas is enough.
They don't know that there are about a half dozen different books that
go by that name. They don't know that the "Peanuts Parade 12" that they
have is actually an abridged Weekly Reader edition.
Even when they strive to be precise, the listings are often in error.
By choosing the wrong words off of the cover, the description can make
a common book sound like one you've never heard of. Or they tell you the
book is Peanuts when it's Peanuts 2000. They tell you the
book was published in 1960, when it's a book from 1970 reprinting strips
from 1960-1967.
Your best tool in battling this problem is research. If you're at all
unclear what a book is, come to this guide and see if you can find out
what it is. If you still have questions, email the bookseller or auctioneer.
Never believe the listing when it says that the book is "rare" or "valuable" (eBayers
seem to believe a reverse logic that owning something proves it's rare),
and don't assume that because someone is asking $50 for a book, it must
be a valuable book. And if Schulz is just one of the listed contributors
on a book, don't assume that there is much Schulz material in there; some
books will list him as a contributor while reprinting just one strip.
If you're uncertain about an item, ask questions. Auctions have
an email contact system, and bookstores generally have an email address
for questions as well.
- Take advantage of eBay's Buy It Now feature
Some eBay users set up their auctions so that bidding will start at one
price (say, $5), but if there are no bidders yet, you can buy the item
outright for a higher price (say, $10). If you see something that you think
is a particularly good deal at the Buy It Now price, snap it up! For a
desirable item, this will often be a lower price than it would have brought
at full auction, and it also saves you the waiting and the uncertainty
that come with letting the auction play out.
- Keep an eye on shipping price
It's easy to bid a buck or two on a book and overlook that the seller
is going to charge you $5 for shipping and handling, which is a major change
on the real price of the item. Many auctioneers list their shipping charges
in the auction. Many auctioneers presume or require Priority Mail shipping,
which for most books will add more than two bucks over the cheaper (but
slower) Book Rate/Media Rate shipping. Be particularly careful if you are
not in the same country as the seller, as international shipping can be
pricy.
- Avoid reserve auctions
Perhaps this is not so much a piece of advice as trying to enlist you
into my personal campaign, but here goes: If you find an eBay auction where
the current bid price listing includes a notation that reserve not yet
met, steer clear. What this means is that the auctioneer has put a
reserve price on the auction; while he may start the auction at $5, there
is some other price that he has set as the minimum acceptable winning bid,
such as $50. That means that you could go through all the effort and consideration
of figuring out how much to bid, choose to bid $40, outbid everyone else,
and you still wouldn't get the item. Alternatively, you could bid $60,
and end up paying a full $50 even though no one else has bid even $5. If
the auctioneer won't accept less than $50 for the item, then he should
simply set the minimum bid at $50. To do otherwise is to waste your
time. If you bid on these auctions, you just encourage this practice.
- Have fun!
If you find yourself growing aggrevated, angry, or frustrated in your
attempts to build your collection, stop. Collecting is supposed
to be fun; if you're not enjoying it, what's the point?
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