"Where do you get all of this stuff?" We get that a lot. The answer is always the same, "It comes from customers like you." Right now we're looking to fill our soon-to-open Recreation Exchange and could use team sports equipment. If you have basketball, baseball, football, soccer, volleyball or other team sports equipment that you no longer use, we'd love to see it come over our trade counter. Our other expanding area of need is musical equipment. We are looking for any and everything -- brass, woodwinds, strings, percussion, acoustic, electronic, accessories, you name it! If you check out our new musical instrument sections you'll see tons of guitars. Don't let that stop you from trading yours in. They sell quickly and we need you to restock!

The process for trading sporting, recreation and musical goods is the same as for books, DVDs, CDs and video games. Here's a quick refresher:

Bring your items that you no longer use and we will issue trade or cash (trade is always the better deal).

Our buyers will take a look to see what we can sell. Our stock and customer demands change from day to day and store to store so we can't predict what we'll buy at any given time but generally we take into consideration:

* Supply: Our current inventory level might prevent us from putting an offer on an item. Even when your trade is in great condition, is rare or valuable, and is a hot item, if we don't have room for it we can't put in an offer. Take it to another Bookmans location or bring it back after we've had a chance to sell what we have to make room.

* Demand: We see so many interesting things in the course of a day and we'd like to take them all, but we aren't collectors. We need to be able to sell the things you trade in, which means the Bookmans shopper has to be looking to buy such an item.

* Condition: We sometimes see items that should have been given a little more TLC than they've received. Generally we will pass on those. We are looking for items that are as close to new as possible. There's a catch; even if an item is brand new we still have to consider our supply and your demand.

Our buyers will make an offer after taking into consideration what we can sell. You have a choice between Bookmans trade credit, which you can use at any store for any items including coffee in our cafes, or a lesser amount of cash. We always try to make as fair an initial offer as possible. Our goal is to make a partnership with you since you provide our stock.

Our trade counters are always open during store hours and no appointment is necessary. We look forward to seeing you there!