Rotary book sale organiser Ann Pritchard on the event coming up in March.
The Tauranga Rotary Club’s annual book sale this year is shaping up to have a bumper selection as volunteers start the task of sorting through a large stockpile of donated titles.
The three-day sale is to be held in a Seeka coolstore at the end of Harvard Way, Mount Maunganui, opposite Classic Flyers from noon on Friday, March 3.
Last year’s event had to be cancelled because the Covid alert level was set at red under the traffic light system, limiting the number of people that could attend. A new roof was also being put on the coolstore at the time.
A large collection of books had to be placed in storage last year as a result of the cancellation and was now being taken out for this year’s sale.
Organiser Ann Pritchard did not want to hazard a guess as to how many would be available, but said: “It’s a lot of books.”
People could donate books at numerous locations across the city. Records, CDs, DVDs, jigsaw puzzles, magazines, and even used curtains and oil-filled heaters can also be donated. The curtains and heaters would contribute towards the Bay of Plenty District Health Board’s warm homes project.
However, the club is not seeking donations of Readers’ Digests, encyclopaedias or cassettes, Pritchard said.
“They just don’t sell. We’ve found now that getting rid of stuff is so much more expensive.”
Most fiction books would be priced at $1, and non-fiction $2 (or potentially up to $8 for the “really good ones”), but valuable books, called ‘specials’, would be priced higher.
“[Specials] are books that we look up on the internet and find [to be valuable]. For instance, we’ve just picked up a Raymond Ching, and that’s worth $100. We won’t ask for $100, but perhaps $60 or something like that.”
Yesterday, volunteers started setting up for the sale, and Pritchard said the items would be sorted and priced over the next six weeks.
Rotary book sale organiser Ann Pritchard. Photo / Mead Norton
“We’re sorting the books into various categories,” she said. “We’ve got 24 for non-fiction, and all of the fiction books are being put into alphabetical order.”
The volunteers would be on-site on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays until the opening, and around 40 were there yesterday.
“It’s absolute chaos at the moment... Getting everything set up is the hardest, but once it’s running, it’s easy.”
Pritchard said they needed “more abled bodies” to lift heavy boxes.
When the event was last run in 2021, Pritchard said between $60,000-$70,000 was raised, and the money raised would go towards nominated causes — in earlier years, just over $100,000 had been raised.
Previously, funds had been allocated to the likes of Waipuna Hospice, Tauranga Foodbank, Blind Low Vision NZ, Child Cancer Foundation, Trees for Survival, Under the Stars, Life Education Trust and others.
Pritchard had been leading the charge for the past decade and said people were still interested in reading books, and that the “camaraderie” made her want to come back each year.
“We do it to raise money for local charities. As a Rotary club, that’s what we’re about. It’s the main fundraiser for Tauranga Rotary Club.”
The Seeka coolstore was awash with 80,000 books and hundreds of keen shoppers in 2019. Photo / George Novak
Pritchard said unfortunately there was an issue with parking this year, with their usual carpark spot up for construction. However, another area would be available.
“There will be some parking around the building that we’ll try to reserve for the less able so that people haven’t got too far to go. Even if they can’t park nearby, they can always drive around and pick books up, having paid for them.”
