Pages

book haul + 2nd & Charles review!

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Since I moved to Charlotte (almost a year ago...woah!!), I've been trying really hard to discover our city. I spend extra time driving new roads & getting lost on purpose so that I can find all the hidden gems of where we live. It 's been a really fun adventure and I'm so thankful to live in a place where there are so many different places to visit with so much to do.

A few weeks ago, Scott & I discovered our current favorite store called 2nd & Charles and let me just say, I'm in love. It would take an entire blog post to try and describe every facet of what this place is, but in short, it's a book store that sells way more than just books where you can buy, sell & trade your own media. They also sell music, dvds, fandom merchandise, a small amount of gift items (like coffee mugs), comic books & video games. They have a section for electronics, too, so you can buy pre-owned phones, gaming systems, kindles, etc.

The first time we visited, we were on a time crunch so the realization of what 2nd & Charles is didn't really set in until our second visit when we spent hours just browsing. The new books & the preloved books are mingled in together, which I absolutely love. Right beside a current best seller you may easily find an old favorite that's in excellent condition, or a book that you've always wanted to read but never got around to getting. I love books and I love reading so this was just nerd heaven for me.

As far as prices go, my wallet & I are super excited to say that this is an excellent place to purchase used titles that are in excellent condition. Scott & I are in the process of building our first home and one of the rooms we wanted to create was a library / study that would be sort of an extension of our master bedroom. We want to create a space that's incredibly comfy & relaxing (and technology free), so we've been on a mission to find both our favorite books that we've already read & new-to-us books to fill our future book cases. There's no way we could afford to purchase all of the books we want brand new, so I'm very thankful for a store like 2nd & Charles where most books are around $6, but I've snagged a few as low as $3!

My first purchases were cook books. This place has a GREAT selection of cook books... if you're working to build up your cook book collection, this is a great place to thrift through. For these six cook books, I paid $24.10 and their retail value new is around $94.00!  There are very few signs of wear on any of these books & some look like they've never been open. I'm excited to try out these recipes & get to abandon the Internet for how-to's. Perhaps a blog post is in order talking about my mission to decrease technology? I'm very excited about that goal...



My second set of purchases were specifically for leisure reading. I am so excited to dive into these! There's a healthy mix of fiction, Christian living, health & finance...what can I say? My taste is eclectic! From top to bottom, this stack includes: Wither by Lauren DeStefano, Everlasting by Elizabeth Chandler (which is actually a sequal! I need to pick up the first book), French Women Don't Get Fat by Mirelle Guilliano, Wrecked by Anna Davies, Crazy Love by Francis Chan, Start Your New Life Today by Joyce Meyer & Financial Peace Revisited by Dave Ramsey. In total I paid $37.70 for $124.90 worth of books!

Oh, and when I say we "paid" for these...well, technically we did pay, but not traditionally. Their system of buying your pre-loved items worked wonderfully for us! We had an old iPhone 5 + a couple books & movies and ended up with close to $200 in store credit... um, what?! On top of that, every time you check out you get a receipt with a survey. Fill out the survey and you get $5 off your next purchase of at least $25.00. $5.00 is enough to get a great book at 2nd & Charles, so it's like getting a free book every time you visit just for filling out their survey!

Scott & I love coming here for a date night. We stick together and look at books & then we go do our own thing on different isles, then we meet back up and go through our basket that we've inevitably filled up before making our final selections. This is such a fun trip to take together that doesn't cost a lot of money. Not every trip we take ends up with a haul like the two above, although it's hard to leave empty handed.

My only dilemma now is which book to start first!

No comments:

Post a Comment

 
Design by Studio Mommy (© Copyright 2015)