Why You Should Shop 2nd & Charles!

Have you discovered 2nd & Charles yet? If not, then you definitely should. There are 23 locations across the US. You can check here to see if there is one located by you. My daughter and I run a book blog and we made our first trip there this weekend. Since I'm frugal and this is a blog that is all about saving money, I decided to blog about it here too!

To read more about how they buy, sell, and trade items, just read our post on our 2nd & Charles Trip & Book Haul here and watch our YouTube Book Haul Video here. 

As you can see from the photos below, these books are retailed at $17.99 and $19.99 and they are both in perfect condition and are priced at $5.00! That is a 75% savings!

Check out some of their book prices! For those that shop on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, you'll see that the prices are much cheaper at 2nd & Charles. Some books sold there are brand new so don't think that all are used. The used are in great condition, actually they are in excellent condition! If you look at our YouTube video, you could see for yourself.


This place is huge and they sell it all! From toys, to comic books, to game systems, game console games, books (of course), vinyl records, record players, pianos, ukulele, guitars, accessories for your instruments, posters, and a few other items that you'd enjoy. This is the perfect place to shop for Christmas. If you need to shop for someone, I guarantee you that you'll find something here for them.

If you have a family member that collects vinyl records, this is your place. As you can see from the photo above, they have it all! I took a picture of the music I grew up on. I'm not old but my parents did always have some good music on. My favorite is Motown music, there's nothing like doo-wop music to get you up and dancing!

The store features a clearance section which is awesome. So on top of their already low prices, they lower them even more! This means more and more people have brought them some awesome books or they received some new releases and they have to move these babies on out the door to make room for the ones they just received. I saw some books here as low as $0.80! Yes $0.80! Perfect stocking stuffers--I'm already thinking of Christmas, am I crazy for that?

In the middle of the store, you'll see some tables that have some books with some old toys or collectable items to purchase. Around here they'll also have the new releases on display. I noticed that some of their new releases are priced out the same as Amazon and Barnes & Noble but don't let that discourage you from buying them. Because remember you can bring your old books and get store credit or cash back and use that towards your purchase! So in the end, it's a win/win for you and for them!

This weekend was an eventful one for us. We actually had fun shopping all together as a family! Not one person complained about wanting to go home because they were "tired", "bored", or just "annoyed". I was the one for the first time that had to drag all 3 of them out of the store! Yes, all 3--the husband our 2 children. That is a rarity in our family. Usually I'm the one that takes long shopping and they'll be the ones trying to drag me out. Not this time. We made a deal that we would try to come at least weekly to see what's new or every other week.

The books below are what my daughter and I got for our book collection and for our book blog. We took a few of our old books in and got credit as I stated before. This is what we purchased on Saturday:

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
Allegiant by Veronica Roth
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz

This came out to $21.96 after the $5.60 store credit was applied.

The second day 6/21/15, we came in and got these:

Being Friends with Boys by Tara Elan McVoy
Identical by Ellen Hopkins
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

This came out to $18.22 after the $0.80 store credit was applied.

We had to come back, this store sucked us in! As you can see All of these book would have cost us around $127.67 and I only paid $40.18. I saved $87.49! Books are expensive and if you are an avid reader like we are then you know that reading is an expensive habit that cannot be broken. This is the answer! We have finally found it! And did I mention there's a free bin outside! The books that you bring in that you may want to sell or trade and they turn away, you can always 'free bin it'. We found a dvd in the free bin yesterday, Final Destination 2! It's not an ideal movie for the kiddos but it's a movie that that husband and I can watch together.

I'm sure you'd enjoy shopping here as much as my family did. Let me know if you found one in your area and if you enjoyed it as much as we did! Before you go there is one last picture I wanted to share with all of you. It's the back of their wall--it's made of books. Real books and it sort of bothered me that not all of them were facing the same way but I think they purposely put it that way. Check it out!

How cool is that? Reading is important so grab some old books, trade them in, and get some new ones for a really great price!