More than a business success story of buying, collecting and selling, Recycled Books — housed inside the lilac-colored, century-old Wright Opera House on Denton’s Square — has become a local icon.

Recycled Books Records CDs, one of the last independent used bookstores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month.

DRC/Al Key

Recycled Books Records CDs, owned by Don Foster, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this weekend. The business, housed in the old, lilac-painted Wright Opera House, has evolved into a Denton icon.

Founder Lucy Lovely opened the store in 1983 in a hole in the wall on University Drive, and Recycled Books soon grew to a larger location around the corner from Texas Woman’s University.

Growth dictated several expansions into neighboring stores, prompting Recycled Books to relocate again in 1990 to the first floor of the business’ current space in the Opera House. Within another year, the store spread out into the mezzanine and basement.

“It was like magic,” said owner Don Foster, who was formerly married to Lovely. “Wonderful books started showing up we never knew existed in Denton.”

Foster said he bought out two stores in Fort Worth, adding to his already sprawling inventory.

“It was fortuitous that we moved when we did,” he said.

With shelving built on every wall, nook and cranny, Recycled Books has more than 300,000 books in stock, as well as thousands of CDs, records, cassettes, VHS tapes and DVDs. The basement is packed with nonfiction, featuring subjects from world history to self-help to cookbooks, while the main floor houses 15,000 CDs, plus vinyl LPs, movies, genre paperbacks, children’s books, religion and art books. The third floor is dedicated to classic and contemporary fiction along with poetry. 

But aside from the mass quantity of books, music and memorabilia in the store’s 17,000 square feet, Recycled Books prides itself as a source for rare and collectible items.

Tucked in a back corner of the main floor, the rare and collectibles area is protected behind a glass display case and locked wooden gate.

Foster unlocks the door to show off a personal collection he recently bought: a signed Paul McCartney album and two framed signature plaques of Madonna and the Backstreet Boys.

“We have something completely different,” he said. “We’re not Barnes & Noble.”

Foster said his staff uses price guides, expert book knowledge and the Internet to evaluate rare or collectible books so they can make sure that both the seller and the buyer get a good deal.

“We have the highest quality — we don’t buy everything, just quality,” Foster said. Recycled does not buy duplicates, textbooks, Reader’s Digest or Har­le­quin Romance books.

“But as much as we turn away, we buy,” he said.

On any day, Foster said anywhere between hundreds and thousands of books and CDs come into the store. He and his staff of 15 put the items in categories, alphabetizing them, but none are logged on a database.

“Nothing is computerized,” he said.

Between customers coming in to sell books and Foster’s keen sense of buying at estate sales and purchasing individual collections, he said a computerized system would be impossible to keep up with.

Each employee mans a separate section or sections, developing a specialized knowledge. “I defer to them,” Foster said. “It’s great to have people who you can trust and who will give good service.”

Courtney Broadbent, an em­ployee since February, says she loves working at Recycled.

Organizing her sections — religion, philosophy, Westerns, best-sellers and reference — has fostered her love for books and her desire to become a writer. She’ll begin work on an English degree at the University of North Texas in the fall.

“It’s a dream job and it makes me want to stay in Denton after I finish school,” Broadbent said, adding that she loves the store’s wide array of customers.

“We like that different people come in — street characters, old, young, mothers with their children, high school students hanging out in the corners talking,” she said. “It is the center of this side of town.”

Growing appeal

Recycled Books’ allure has broadened over the last quarter-century to include dealers and collectors from all over the U.S. and Europe who have specialty collections such as history or art.

“Our customer base has grown from locally to worldwide,” he said.

That even includes dealers who have their own stores. Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer-winning author who owns several rare and collectible book stores in his hometown of Archer City, is always on the lookout for British history, contemporary and classic literature, he said.

“He’s a good customer,” Foster said, recalling an encounter with him during the accumulation of a collection from a book critic in Fort Worth.

“Larry called and said if we went to get the collection, we could have what he didn’t want,” he said. “It was fascinating to watch him zip through boxes looking for things he didn’t have.

“He knows his stuff.”

Foster said the music section’s wide variety and quality are owed to the fact that much of the merchandise comes from the same customers who buy them — especially the music students and instructors at UNT. From experimental music to the standards, CDs usually net a payout of $4 each. Recycled resells most of them for $7.77.

Posters advertising live music and theatrical productions are tacked throughout the store, exemplifying Recycled Books’ commitment to the local art scene. The store prides itself on selling works released by local musicians; Recycled buys the discs outright.

Midlake, a Denton indie rock band that’s gained notice here and abroad, filmed a music video in the store. Jazz saxophonist Bran­ford Marsalis and David Ogden Stiers, a horn player and actor who’s known for his role on M*A*S*H, have shopped at Re­cy­cled, bringing a little celebrity status to the store.

But it’s the everyday local shoppers who seem to benefit the most.

Carolyn Bason, a librarian at Denton High School, has been frequenting Recycled Books for 16 years. In addition to looking for books for the school library, such as titles that are recommended reads for students before they attend college, Bason said she’s always looking for obscure items for herself that she can’t find anywhere else.

“The best thing about Recycled is if you are looking for a title out of print, you can usually find what you’re looking for,” she said. “You can always find unique and quirky things in there.”

LPs to CDs and back again

Through the past 25 years of operating Recycled Books, Foster said one of the biggest changes in the business is the use of the Internet.

Selling books on Amazon.com in recent years has garnered sales up to four times what a book may bring in the store, but he admits the venue of selling baffles him.

“Some things that are scarce, you can find multiples of online,” he said. “You never know why people are buying something.”

And Foster said he doesn’t understand the appeal of buying a book online.

Part of the excitement of buying a new book for him is the physical experience of perusing the shelves of a store.

“It’s the hands-on experience that is something special,” he said.

Foster’s love for the printed page and story is evidenced not only by the business that he’s built buying, selling and collecting the past 25 years. He worked at the print shop at UNT as he earned his master’s in English.

With a personal taste as eclectic as his store, Foster collects musical genres that span jazz, blues and classical to Fela Kuti — whom he describes as the James Brown of Africa — and postrock groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor and literary troubadour Nick Cave.

As for books, he said, “I’ve become a big mystery fan lately,” listing British police procedure stories by authors Ian Rankin and Reginald Hill as favorites.

Recycled Books, a time capsule of literature and music, is also a historical collection of media.

Foster has seen technology come and go. Betamax videos, Laserdiscs and now Blu-ray DVDs are fading from the market, but Recycled still fills a niche for older media forms.

“VHS is still a big selling market, and records sell better than they ever did,” Foster said.

He is fascinated by the re­cent popularity of LPs and the return of the turntable market.

Young people are collecting originals from record companies on virgin vinyl that are selling for $12 to $30, claiming the sound is better and warmer than CDs, he said.

Housing treasures

Despite what Foster says are alarming statistics stating fewer people are reading, “of those who read, they are fervent.”

And he’s discovered that new generations are still reading classics by the likes of Chuck Palahniuk, Kurt Vonnegut and Carlos Castaneda.

“Young people always discover them,” he said, in addition to the authors who have always had wide appeal, such as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein and now J.K. Rowling.

“She’s my hero,” Foster said, comparing the success of Rowl­ing’s Harry Potter books to Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit series, which was published in monthly installments.

“People are now doing this for books,” he said.

But Foster wonders how digitized books may affect his business.

“What are people going to sell when they need money?” he asks. “It [books and music] will all be in their computers and they will have nothing to get rid of.”

While the future of the printed page and the value of musical recordings may be up for cultural debate, one thing is certain. Recycled Books is a treasure and an experience to those who love books and music.

Adding shelves and titles is an ongoing task for the store that is busting at the seams with inventory. Visit the store and you’ll find all ages and types of customers browsing the maze of aisles for an author, sampling a CD via headphones or trading in a bag of books.

For Foster, what he enjoys is the thrill of the next special find.

“You never know when someone’s going to bring in remarkable stuff you’ve never seen before,” he said. “It makes it fun.”

But buying for his loyal customers keeps him inspired, he said, “especially when you find things you have no interest in, but you know they will make someone really happy.”

Recycled Books Records CDs

Location: 200 N. Locust St.

Phone: 940-566-5688

Hours: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily

On the Web: www.recycledbooks.com