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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.

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.

  1. 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.


  2. 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!


  3. 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.


  4. 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...buy & sell books music movies gamesHalf.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.
    • AlibrisAlibris 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.

  5. 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.


  6. 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.
  7. 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.

  8. 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!


  9. 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.


  10. 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.


  11. 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.


  12. 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.


  13. 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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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 1992-2009 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 on the basis of this information.

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Content copyright 1997-2018 Nat Gertler

AAUGH.com is not affiliated with Peanuts Worldwide nor with the Charles M. Schulz Estate.