Coloring Books
Buy and sell coloring books in Costa Rica.
Wila the tapir, Otto the coati and Waldo the trogon travel through Costa Rica’s national parks in a bilingual coloring book by Ruth Angulo, and they have company: local illustrators have put the country’s flora and fauna on the page for children, for visitors taking a gift home and for adults who color to unwind. Coloring books, new and pre-owned, run from thick-lined character books for small hands to intricate gardens and mandalas that want sharp pencils and a free evening. What a used one is worth comes down to a simple count: how many pages are still blank.
Character books, mandalas and Costa Rican scenes:
most coloring books are made for one kind of hand. Children’s books have thick outlines a crayon can fill, and the Barbie or Batman ones sell on the character as much as the drawing, often with a sticker sheet tucked in. Water-reveal pads such as Melissa & Doug’s Water Wow work differently: a pen filled with water brings out the color, and the page fades back as it dries, ready to use again. Adult books split two ways. Johanna Basford’s Secret Garden and Millie Marotta’s animal books are dense, fine-lined work, while the bold-and-easy style made popular by Coco Wyo uses chunky scenes that are quicker to finish and easier on older eyes and hands. Costa Rican titles, from bilingual park adventures to adult books by local authors, often leave the country as presents. Picture books for reading aloud sit with animal books, and guides on keeping small children busy and learning belong in parenting books.
Single-sided pages, markers and colored pencils:
match the book to the tools before anything else. Markers, alcohol markers above all, soak through ordinary paper, so they need a book printed on one side only, with a spare sheet behind the page. Most intricate adult books, Basford’s regular editions among them, are printed on both sides, which suits colored pencils and rules markers out. Watercolor needs the thick card of an artist’s edition. Perforated pages are worth having if you want to frame a finished picture. For a small child, the lines matter more than the paper: a book that is too detailed gets scribbled over once and abandoned.
Barbie, mandalas and what a half-colored book is worth:
a plain children’s coloring book or a small mandala pad costs around ₡3,000 to ₡4,500 new, while licensed character books and the larger adult titles sit nearer ₡7,000 to ₡9,000. Used, the price follows the blank pages rather than the cover. An untouched copy of a title still on sale new goes for a little under its shelf price, because nothing about it has changed; one with half its designs done is closer to an extra thrown in with a box of pencils. Water-reveal pads hold their value best, since a used one works like new as long as the pen does.
Blank pages, bleed-through and missing sheets:
those are what to check in a second-hand coloring book. Count the untouched designs instead of trusting the cover, and turn over every colored page: in a double-sided book, marker that went through has spoiled the drawing behind it even when that drawing looks blank from the front. Perforated books often arrive with the best pictures torn out, so compare what is left with the page count on the back, and in children’s books expect the stickers to be gone. With a water-reveal pad, try the pen on a page; a split brush tip or a pen that floods the paper is the fault to spot.
Coloring books from a child who moved on, or a hobby that never started:
most second-hand copies come from one of those two places. Parents clearing a shelf in Cartago or Alajuela tend to have a stack of half-done character books, which goes faster as one lot. Adults who bought an intricate book on impulse often have it near new, and should say so plainly. Give the title, the illustrator and the language, since a bilingual Costa Rican title and an English-only import reach different buyers. Photograph one finished page and one blank one, say how many designs are untouched and whether the pages are single-sided, and mention any Faber-Castell or Prismacolor pencils thrown in. Anyone coming to collect should leaf through every page before paying, because a coloring book is only as good as the drawings it still has left to color.