Warning: this post is geek level.

So, I’m going to be honest here. I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons before. Mostly it involved food, snacks, and friends. Just to push the stereotypes to the side, there were even girls there too (including my wife and her sister)! We had a great time, made up some neat stories, and it’s something I look back on fondly. The thing is, the books that are older are totally worth some money!

The worst part is that I don’t even have time to be a geek anymore, although I do have two Legend of Zelda t-shirts (please control yourself ladies). Now family, friends, blogging, and eBay fill up my time. I barely have room for my fitness goals, let alone a late night of Dungeons and Dragons. This works well though because eBay is my real life video game now!

The neat thing about Dungeons and Dragons books is that they are just that: books. Something that goes for $1 or less at most garage sales.

There’s a huge variety of types, editions, and all that, so it takes a bit of research. But man the profits can awesome!

The set below sold overnight! Any listing that sells in 1 day is great, but high dollar ones are even better!

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The neat part about the three sales I’m going to show is that it’s actually from two different buys almost a year apart. I’m not great about listing everything right away and for some reason, a box of Dungeons and Dragons (and other RPG) books just sat in a corner. This second recent purchase reminded me of the original set, and I combined all of them and listed strategically.

On top of that, I didn’t just buy these books at the garage sales. I actually spent $75 at each for a total of $150. The first included two sets of jack stands, allowing me to re-sell another pair of stands (that I had trouble selling on Craigslist) for $15 at my flop garage sale.

We also got 2/3 of a can of Valspar paint for free too. I’ve sold free things from Craigslist before, but this was even better.

Pro-tip: Leftover paint is great for small projects. The garage sale owners want to get rid of it, and you can spruce up an old shelf on the cheap like my wife did!

Now, I don’t like counting my eggs before they hatched, but from these two sales, I still have a lot to list: three salvation army figurines that sell for $100+ each, a $50 hat, some RPG video games, a few more RPG book sets, and there’s some items that I actually did get to list already (another ~$250+ in future sales).

Even for someone who played Dungeons and Dragons, the books were confusing. There were different editions that had similar print dates. Some of the editions overlapped but fans want 2nd edition, not the 2nd edition revised (or vice versa). To research the D&D books I found two awesome resources:

D&D Classics which sells these books in electronic format. People still want the original hard copies though!

The Acaeum which was unbelievably helpful for any 70s/80s material. This goes over every single edition of a lot of the books. And there were a bunch of them!

The last set I sold was a huge lot.







OK nerd, how much gold did you get in your dungeon crawl?

Purchase price – $150 (including everything from both sales including the unlisted/unsold items)



End Selling Price – $129.99 (Encyclopedia Magica set) + $129.99 (Volo’s Guide) + $249.99 (Huge AD&D 2nd Edition Revised lot) + $15 (jack stands)= $509.97



Fees and Shipping/Handling – $96.76

Total Profit (so far): $278.21

Again, I know I don’t like mentioning future sale potential but there’s another $500+ in sales from these two purchases. I included the purchase price of the total purchases even though the books were the cheapest part! Most of the books were $1 a piece, but what the hell.

I was able to ship all of these as Priority. If the price for shipping high dollar books is similar, I’d rather go with Priority for the better insurance. In this case, it was strangely cheaper because they were in a closer zone and right on a major USPS route. Cheaper and better service? Who wouldn’t take that!

So, keep an eye out for Dungeon and Dragon books. Even the newer ones (2000 and later) will sell if you have bigger lots, but the older stuff is definitely more collectible since it just wasn’t as popular back then. There’s a lot of people who are in their 30s and 40s with a little more disposable income and would love to pick up some nostalgic items. Now you just need to throw in some vintage Mountain Dew to seal the deal.