Poll - Textbooks

I was in college more than a decade ago, and it was ~$60-$80/each for the big hard-cover ones.  But I definitely had a few that were in the $150 range, and, of course, a few (for literature classes and such) that ran no more than $10, used.

Hmmm, surely you could swipe someone elses books.

"Freelance Textbook Relocating" I think it's called...

I was in college from '92-'95 and then again from '99-'01. Prices for books really depended on the subject. My English Lit (major for most of my college career) typically ran anywhere from $8 to $80, the most expensive being my Shakespeare compendium which I think was ~$100. Science books were decidedly more. I think I paid around $120 for my biology and chemistry books. Math books varied, but you could usually expect to pay around $50-$70.

When I switched my major to business (bad choice) I paid much less per book, but typically needed more of them per semester.

I considered myself lucky if the class hadn't switched to a different text or a newer edition for the next semester and I could actually sell them back, even at a 75% loss.

Sounds like a good choice to me--although there was a brief period of time between 1999 and 2000 in which English majors were actually being hired as web developers.

 $20-$45 depending on course and new v. used.

1983-88  B.S. Mechanical Engineering.

I thought it was outrageous back then. I can only imagine what it is going to be like in 8-12 years when my daughters go to college.

$70-$100 depending on course.
1987-91  B.S. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

I can distinctly remember buying a quite slim organic chem lab text for $72 and returning it for trade-in at the bookstore.  They offered me the princely sum of $6 (no, that wasn't a typo -- I wrote SIX DOLLARS), and they had those texts selling used for $42.  (It should here be noted that I consider it blasphemy to write or highlight in or fold down the page corner of any book.)  I posted a 4x6 notecard on the wall outside the organic lecture, asking $35.  A student actually tracked me down in my lab to buy it from me not 20 minutes later.

97-01 ... engineering related (eng, math, chem, phys, etc)  typically pulled about 600-800/semester on a 4-5 course load so that's about $150 per course I guess.

01-03 ... engineering related (grad school)  typically pulled about 400-500/semester on a 2-3 course load ... so again somewhere in the $150+ range per course


never really sold much of any books back, but I know people routinely got on the order of 10 -15 maybe  20 (if pristine condition)% of sticker price only to see them marked back up to 80% of new price as 'used'