Annual sale hailed a big success
An annual Timaru book sale was ‘‘one of the best yet’’, raising just over $15,000, its convenor says.
Red Cross book sale convenor Janette Clarke said the Saturday to Monday sale saw thousands of books going ‘‘out the door’’ and the group was thrilled with the amount raised - up from the $14,000 it usually raised.
‘‘It makes the whole thing really worth while, when we see how much we’ve raised,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve had a huge amount of very good books sold.’’
There had been a long queue of enthusiastic shoppers waiting at the hall when it opened at 9am on Saturday morning.
The rest of the day had also been well supported, she said.
‘‘The $3 books were flying out the door and the quality of the books donated this year has just been excellent,’’ Clarke said.
‘‘The generosity of people is just so good.’’
She said the following two days of the book sale were ‘‘very steady’’.
‘‘We’ve had a nice trickle of people all the way through.’’
She said fiction paperbacks had, once again, been popular.
‘‘Also the board games were very popular and most of the jigsaws sold,’’ she said.
‘‘The jigsaws in the morning, people were like bees in a honeypot around them.’’
She said this year the sale, about the 40th, had received the biggest number of games in its history.
After the sale closed its doors on Monday afternoon, it was back to the drawing board for organisers with remaining books resorted, tidied and then returned to the charity’s storing room in an upstairs room off Stafford St.
‘‘We collect the books all year round and sort them,’’ she said.
She said organisers were looking forward to having to take ‘‘a lot less books’’ back to the storage room following the sale.
But there wasn’t much time to take a breather.
‘‘The sale finishes and then we’re on to the next one.’’
Money raised will go to the South Canterbury branch of Red Cross for items of need including defibrillators, first aid courses and swimming lessons for children.