What would the average Doper feel would be a proper offer for his/her yearbooks?
Now, let’s look at a related question - would have the same reaction to an offer to buy your parents yearbooks? Or grandparents?
My own reaction is that, unless I’m dumpster-diving for food no amount of money would be enough to get me to part with a yearbook, or a cruisebook. (Think of that as a yearbook for a USN ship.) Likewise my parents’ yearbooks. It’s family history and I’m not selling that.
I just found an eBay store that offers, among other things, USN cruisebooks and while I’m drooling over the WWII USS Nevada cruisebook, I can’t imagine ever letting something like that out of the family.
My HS yearbook really doesn’t mean anything to me. I still have it someplace, but if anyone was giving me money for it, I’d hand it over. I only had a couple of good friends at that school, and I have their grad photos around in a shoebox. My own grad photo is framed and up on my Mom’s wall, so it’s not like I need the yearbook to remember what I was like back then.
As for the autographs, honestly, it’s not like I’m going to gaze back nostalgically at all the “Wow, it’s been fun - hope you have fun in college” messages scribbled by classmates who signed the page out of a sense of obligation.
So, yup, if a stranger was giving me $25 for it, we’d probably have a deal.
The cheap spiral-bound yearbook we put together in CEGEP (junior college), though, is something I’ll keep, because those years meant more to me. I couldn’t sell that.
Just found out recently that one of the yearbooks in our basement has a student in it that recently won an Oscar ™. So that one went from “what’s that doing here?” to “cool!”
I’d totally sell my high school yearbook, even with the signatures in it. I hated high school, so ten years later, I’m still not sure why I bought it. Anyone looking for Miami Killian Senior High School, class of 1996?
If you’re serious about getting rid of your old yearbook, call up the school’s alumni office. There are often people who’ve lost theirs because of fire or flood or other hazard who might be very eager to get a replacement.
I work in a museum and we collect yearbooks for our archives. We’ve had people offer to sell them to us for ten bucks apiece (which we’ve declined because we rarely buy items.)
The “precious memories” aspect for some people lasts about as long as it takes for the “Just Graduated!” message to wear off their car. We often get new grads who give them to us within weeks of leaving school.
I’d give them away for free, because, hey, more shelf space for real books. My parents dropped ninety buck a year, three years in a row, for mine, despite my telling them I didn’t want them. I never even got anyone to sign them or anything. They just went straight home onto that top shelf of random crap.
No kidding! A few years ago, right before my 20th reunion, I saw my senior yearbook (Redondo Union High School 1983) listed on eBay as “the Traci Lords yearbook”. The bidding was over $300!! I forgot to go back and see what it finally sold for. Not bad for something that cost $25 new.
I pulled out my high school yearbook to remind myself of names and faces before the fifth-year reunion, and was amazed at how dated the haircuts looked, even though it had only been five years. (I needed to review the yearbook because I couldn’t remember anyone’s names; I really didn’t keep in touch with any of them and I still don’t.) As to whether I’d sell my yearbook, I would do so if I hadn’t gotten them signed. It would be a little weird to see my yearbook for sale in a used bookstore with the personal notes written in.
I can’t imagine selling mine, though I’m not sure why. And certainly, I have no reason to believe that mine would be worth anything (only about half of them have signatures, maybe less than that if you count my college yearbooks). I suppose that if someone offered me a fairly large sum of money, I’d reconsider, but right now I’d be inclined to keep them just in case I want them in twenty years.
I don’t have any particular sentimental attachment to mine, but I think of them as time capsules. Fashion, hairstyles, design, look-how-young-we-all-were, that kind of thing. Every once in a while, I drag them out and marvel about how much has changed since the late 70s.
It’s the same reason I keep a stash of “Seventeen” magazines from the same era. I can also use them for research if I need to design anything with that retro feel.
