QUESTION: I'm considering attending a Postal Service book auction. I wonder how much competition there is, and whether the quality of the books is good enough to make it worthwhile.

ANSWER: The Postal Service does auction off a huge amount of new and used books periodically at its Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta. These bulk-lot auctions consist of books that weren't deliverable, sometimes because they came loose in the mail.

I've never attended a USPS auction in person, but I did win several lots when the Postal Service was conducting these auctions on eBay a few years ago. That online program has been discontinued, and now most of the book auctions are done live in Atlanta.

The lots usually consist of a few hundred books separated into broad categories, such as cookbooks, college textbooks, children's books, etc. The books are packed in boxes and you can't examine them before bidding -- it's pot luck.

Compared to the eBay auctions of a few years ago, my hunch is there are far fewer bidders at today's live auctions, since only those who can manage to attend in person may bid. When the auctions were on eBay, anyone in the country could bid, and on certain lots the bidding was furious.

I was pleased with the contents of most of the dozen lots I received. Nearly every single book was in very good condition, and some were still in their factory shrinkwrap.

I paid anywhere from $400 to $1,200 per lot, depending on what type of book category it was and how competitive the bidding was. For example, I won several lots of college textbooks, and the bidding went very high on those, sometimes over $1,000 per lot. (There aren't as many books in textbook lots since the books tend to be larger and heavier than average.) There were many valuable books in those lots, and I suppose that's why bidding went so high -- a sufficient number of bidders had a good idea of the value.

On some of those textbook lots I paid more than $10 per book (including shipping) but still made a good profit because they usually contained several books worth $50, $100 or more.

The bidding did not go as high for fiction book lots. One of the cheapest lots I won was a group of about 500 law books. I thought I'd made out like a bandit when I won the whole lot for $400. It was a rude awakening when I unpacked it and started researching prices. Most of the books were obsolete and had no ISBNs, making the whole lot practically worthless.