This HomeGoods Find Caught Me Totally Off-Guard (It’s Real Vintage!)

If you ask me where I’ve gotten pretty much anything in my home from, you’ll usually get one of two answers. The first is, “it’s vintage (sometimes followed by “from my parents’ house”). The second is some variation of Anthropologie, T.J. Maxx, or HomeGoods. This isn’t to say I don’t branch out ever. But I’m a bit of a creature of habit, and I like what I like. 

So you can imagine my surprise when I realized two of my favorite things — secondhand shopping and HomeGoods — had quietly overlapped all along. And that’s all thanks to the store’s surprisingly good selection of vintage books.

If you’re a frequent visitor to HomeGoods’ “Decorative Accents” department, then you’ve probably seen a lot of coffee table books strewn about this area. Sometimes they’re well-organized on an end cap, or you could find them mixed in with things like vases, design objects, and general decor — emphasizing the thrill of the hunt that many of us know and love HG for. Wherever you find them, when you see books at your local store, take a closer look. Because HomeGoods now stocks old-school vintage books, and they’re such a treat to stumble upon. 

Available in bundles of twos and threes and tied off with brown twine, HomeGoods’ vintage book sets range from $19.99 to $34.99, depending on the size and numbers of books. They’re often colorful in terms of their spines and typically cover-less, but I’ve found a few with removable covers as well. And while they’re likely being marketed for their decorative appeal, they’re 100 percent readable and sometimes even include little library card info and fun notes in the margins. 

Sure, some of the books are totally boring (tax records from the early 19th century, anyone?), but I’ve also seen classics like Mary Poppins, Wuthering Heights, and Rebecca. You can also find vintage kids’ books and school-age textbooks, too. They’re all that perfect, crunchy, broken-in book condition that makes them really feel like they’ve lived a lot of life. Translation: They’ll add a ton of soul to your shelves and tabletops. 

I’m not saying you can’t find vintage books elsewhere for way cheaper (always check flea markets/thrift stores/antique malls, yard sales, used bookstores, and local library sales first, especially when looking to buy in bulk). But if you want colorful hardcover old-school books for a project or to fill a special shelf, HomeGoods just might be a great stealthy source. 

I’ve had a lot of fun finding these whenever I pop into the stores (and scoping out the available titles looking for favorites), and I used a slew of them to create the cute wall-mounted shelf moment in a reading nook-meets-bedroom I designed for Apartment Therapy’s last Small/Cool Experience in New York City (see above). 

I can’t find much out about the company that these vintage books are sourced from, other than the fact that the work they do keeps the books from being destroyed. And that’s something I can get behind. So the next time you see a stack of books in HomeGoods, look closer. They just might be vintage!