Old books - valuable? How to clear from a house?

[Lochroy]

Needing to do a house clear out from a house with hundreds of books, many are very old, at least early 20th century and others are collections of special interest, mainly aviation series, from the 1940s-90s.

I don't know where to start. It's important to try and realise some value from them if there's any to be had. So two questions - how do I find out if they have any value and what's the best way to dispose of them?

If anyone has any experience and suggestions, that would be most welcome.

I'd Google the titles/authors and editions. You should get some idea that way.
When my stepfather died, my Mum cleared out his books (formula 1 and hiking mainly) We quickly realised the F1 stuff, even from the years before it was even called that, wasn't worth anything , but the hiking books went on eBay for about £70-100 each!

Look for your nearest antiquarian bookseller. Give them a call. Be prepared to find out they’re really not worth much.

They’ll like you better if you’ve tried to catalogue them.

Go on Abebooks and look up some of the titles. That might give you an idea of prices. Probably many will be pretty much worthless, unfortunately, but you'll have the odd one here and there which isn't.

Then try and find a specialist dealer, which I'd do by googling. It might be easier to find someone who can take them all as a job lot than work through them individually.

You’ll need to box them up and take them to an antiquarian or specialist book seller. By grandfather had hundreds of old books, some of which we suspected to be quite valuable, but we still couldn’t get anyone to come to the house to appraise as they often don’t see if worth their time on the off-chance of there being something of interest - the reality is that most old books are just old books and not actually worth very much unless they’re first editions or rare bindings or short runs or hand etched etc.

Phone a local auction house. They will sometimes come and look at what you have and give you an idea of estimates if you were to send them to auction.

If you have other stuff too, silver, paintings, furniture, they will be more keen to come.

If you call a antique dealer you will not know if they are conning you or not. An auction house will make more profit the higher the value of goods they sell for you so they have an interest in getting genuine prices for you.

Unless you're confident that you have a very good understanding of the market yourself, your best bet would be to get a specialist in to value the collection, BUT be careful of this, as there are some cowboys out there.

I would approach an auction house such as Bonhams or a professional organisation such as the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association and ask for their advice.