Donation guidelines

Your donations and purchases help raise funds for the Oakland Public Library! Please read and follow the guidelines below before bringing in your donations.

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1. We are accepting donations at this time, but we must limit donations to 3 boxes or bags at a time.

2. You may bring your donations during all store hours with no reservation required.

3. Items must be in clean condition. Please no moldy, water-damaged or musty books from garage or basement storage. Even a few short days in a musty basement can cause permanent damage to your books.

4. Please consider: If you wouldn’t buy it, we can’t sell it.

5. Before arriving at the store, please check that we can accept your items using the lists below.

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When donating, please consider: If you wouldn’t buy it, we can’t sell it.

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Items we accept:

• Books

• Graphic Novels

• Comic Books

• CDs (Commercial only - no self burned CDs)

• DVDs (No exercise DVDs)

• Blu-Rays

• Vinyl (in Good to Excellent condition - particularly Hip-Hop, Rock, Jazz)

• Videogames

• Puzzles & Games (complete)

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Items we cannot accept:

• Moldy, Musty or Water damaged books

• Insect and Rodent damaged books

• High-lighted/Underlined books

• Readers Digest condensed books and magazines

• Encyclopedia Sets

• Modern Mass Market Magazines (National Geographic, New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, etc.)

• Ex-Library books

• Cassettes

• VHS tapes

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Other Items That We Are Accepting:

• Ephemera - Postcards, trading cards, vintage posters, stamps, historical and unusual items, bizarre or interesting pamphlets, old photographs…

• “Oaklandia” -  items of specifically Oakland Interest - yearbooks, pre-1960 phonebooks, vintage music flyers, menus…

• Certain Magazines - Vintage, Niche, Science Fiction, Horror & UFO magazines.  Examples of specific titles that we accept: Interview, Vogue & other fashion magazines, Life Magazine original run (1936-1972), Rolling Stone, Starlog, Famous Monsters of Filmland…

• Counter Culture/Sub-Culture/Fringe Culture publications - Newspapers and Magazines from the pre-internet age… unique, bizarre, exotic and outlandish publications are of particular interest. 

 

If you are not sure that your donation fits with what we have described or if you wish to donate more than our maximum for drop-in, please email us at bookmark@fopl.org with a description of what you would like to donate with photos if possible.  If you cannot email please call us and ask for the manager: (510) 444-0473

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Please remember: We have a small number of volunteers who sort through our donations – please respect their time and recycle unacceptable items on your own. Thank you!