Mostly Books

Mostly Books
Warehouse
(215) 238-9838

529 Bainbridge St
Philadelphia, PA 19147
Google Map

Hours:
11am - 9pm

Mostly Books is a huge store that sells books-and more-at 529 Bainbridge Street in Philadelphia. Located at the intersection of the Society Hill, Queen Village, and Bella Vista neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Mostly Books is housed in a series of 19th century stables and workshops. Visitors are delighted as they spend hours winding their way through room after room of personally selected volumes in our incredible collection. And with the reasonable prices, they can leave with a nice bag of books for a fraction of what they would have spent in a mall bookstore. Besides books, we also carry movies(a huge selection of dvds AND vhs), music(cds, tapes and records), as well as what we call '20th century artifacts': photographs, posters, artwork, nick-nacks, and other stuff. We are open seven days from 11am to 9pm.

Books

Come browse our collection of 50,000 books, housed in 5,000 square feet of nineteenth century workshops and stables.A unique urban shopping experience, Mostly Books has been compared to The Strand in New York and Shakespeare & Company in Paris. We have been building our linventory since 1997, starting in a small storefront across the street and a few years later moving across the street to a location that allowed for growth. And grow we did, taking over one building after another as our books became more numeous. Every few years, as space became available, we uncovered a secret door or just burst through a wall and expanded the store. Most recently, in September of this year, we were able to acquire the former Philly Aids Thrift warehouse, connect the two buildings, and double the size of the store. We haven't sacrificed quality for quantity. On the contrary, more space has meant the ability to put more good books up for sale. And stocking up the new space has only driven home just how many good books there are in all subjects. It's a lot of work stocking up the new space, but we are book people-and we're having a good time checking out all the great books coming in and going on the shelves. And we think you'll have a good time also checking out what we have been doing down here.

Movies

Mostly Books carries a huge selection of movies-in both DVD and VHS format. We are always replenishing our collection because we want to keep it interesting. Browsing through our hollywood classics and cult favorites can be just as entertaining as watching them. If you are coming into town to grab a bunch of films to add to your library-or if you live in the neighborhood and just feel like taking a stroll over and pick out something to watch tonight, you can still browse in a video store like the old days, sharing reccomendations with the staff and other customers, increasing your knowledge of movie trivia, looking over all your favorite movies until you find the perfect one for tonight.

Music

We have a large selection of cds, including rock, soul, classical, jazz, international, and many other genres of music. We also have a small collection of vinyl records at our Bainbridge Street store-but keep checking, because we plan to expand our vinyl section.

Photographs

Over the years, we have built up a fascinating collection of snapshots from the collections of ordinary people. They don't come from any single source-perhaps there will be a box of photographs in with a huge load of books from an estate sale, or else someone found an old album in a house they bought. After ten or twelve years we accumulated several thousand of these moments caught in time. We put most of them in a big box and let people spend hours looking through and wondering about all the people in the pictures. These random photographs are .79 each or 3 for $2.00. Selected photographs, ones that are expecially interesting or well composed, cost a little more. You can check out a few slide shows of our favorite photographs set to music on our new YOUTUBE channel: youtube.com/user/mostlybooksphilly

Swap Your Books

Mostly Books is always accepting books, music, and cds for store credit. Any quantity is ok-from one or two books to-well, we haven't had to refuse a collection of books in fifteen years because it was too big-and we have literally had to back up trucks to garages and spend the day loading books for the store. We love books, sorting through them, organizing them, and letting people browse through them and enjoy them. So if you have a bunch of books(or movies or music)that is just taking up space, or you are tired of moving them around from apartment to apartment with you, bring them down. We have a parking space right in front of the store. We will estimate what we sell them for, and give you 35% of that in a store credit(Book credit is only good for other books).