Proper approach to re-home type

Am an abject newbie who bought a tabletop letterpress several years back. The seller included LOTS of boxes of mixed up small type, which I will never use. I have been moving it around with me and want to find a way to get it to someone who can use it. I’m vague because I would need to dig into the boxes to even know what I have. That said, what’s a good approach? Or is there a glut on the market and I should try to find the proper way to recycle the metal (hopefully I haven’t said something blasphemous but I really have no clue if the type is worth anything to anyone or not.) Thanks for any suggestions.

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You could always sell it either through here or on eBay or the like as a grab-bag lot (“X pounds of pied type for sale”). There are those of us who are perfectly happy buying type that way as some of it may well be perfectly useable once it’s been sorted properly. Anything that’s too damaged to print can be recast as new type.

Scrap price for type metal seems to be around $1.50 - $2.00 US per pound, so that can give you a starting point for price. Do you have any idea how many pounds (or kilos-I don’t know where you reside) of type it is you’re wanting to get rid of? Is there any order to it at all (i.e., “I know this box contains a complete font, I just have no idea what it is!”) or is it totally pied?

Michael Hurley
Titivilus Press
Memphis, TN

I neglected to say where I am located — in Southern CA near Palm Springs.

I think there’s a pretty vibrant letterpress community in SoCal, so I doubt you’d have too much trouble finding buyers for what you have. You could probably put an ad here on BP saying how much you have, how much you’d like to get for it, and when people could come by to look and maybe buy, and get at least some response. If you don’t sell it that way you can always contact one of the type foundries to take what’s left to cast as new type. There are at least two that aren’t too far from you; Skyline Type Foundry in Prescott, AZ, and M & H Type Foundry in up San Francisco.

Michael Hurley
Titivilus Press
Memphis, TN

Thanks for the ideas. I took some photos and made a pdf file that shows what is there. Some of the items are in cases or and have labels, others are sorted by letter in cases but I have no idea what font, etc. There are some boxes of spacers, etc. Is there a way to attach a pdf file here? Otherwise, if people want to contact me I can email them the list. As for how many pounds I haven’t figured that out yet but will try and take some of it over and weigh it.

I’m also hoping that someone who knows might help me figure out and better describe what I have, using the photos and hopefully some better ones that will help.

Stephanie