When the Lawrence Public Library couldn’t give away stacks of old, mostly ignored magazines, Bruce Flanders turned to eBay  and made the library a tidy little sum.

“We attempted to give these magazines away to libraries throughout the state of Kansas, but there weren’t any takers,” Flanders, the library director, said Friday. “We just lucked out.”

The magazines, issues of The Craftsman from 1901 to 1918 and issues of The Automobile from the same time, were sold on the Internet auction service this spring to collectors in Minnesota and Arizona.

The magazines were part of a larger collection of old periodicals that Flanders said didn’t get much use anymore by library patrons. Rather than have them take up needed storage space, the library decided to get rid of them.

“We’re not getting rid of everything, by any means, because we still have a need for magazine back piles here,” Flanders said. “But some we never use.”

The Northeast Kansas Library Service furnished a book dealer to see if there was anything valuable in the library’s collection.

“He didn’t see much, but he did see a couple of titles,” Flanders said.

Other magazines in the collection included American Magazine, with issues dating to 1906, and American Rifleman issues going back to 1971.

After other Kansas libraries didn’t bite on Flanders’ offer, he posted the rarer parts of the collection online. Issues of The Craftsman received a top bid of $2,575. The Automobile collection went for $1,200.

Flanders said the money would be used to buy new books, music and other materials. The remaining magazines probably will go to the University of Michigan, which will “digitize” the contents and make them available to libraries nationwide.

“It was a good way to raise some funds for the library,” Flanders said.

And while he’ll keep a lookout for other valuables next time the library weeds its collection, Flanders doesn’t expect much more.

“That’s a possibility,” he said. “We don’t really have rare books at the library  but there may be some gems that we’re not aware of.”