How To Sell Off Collection?

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by Tippy, Jan 9, 2017.

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  1. crookedbill

    crookedbill Forum Resident

    I've been in a similar boat. My wife and I just bought our first home last year. A tiny two-bedroom row-house in the city, so there is very little storage space and really absolutely no space for a physical-media music collection.

    So, I sold 90% of my vinyl collection, about 600 records, to a local shop for a dollar apiece. I was lucky enough to know the owner previously, and he came over to my place to pick everything up. I told him there are some gems, and there is some trash, but you have to take it all - and he did. I don't miss that stuff.

    However, I still have my 2,000 - 3,000 piece CD collection in paid offsite storage ($120/month). Since I spent the entirety of my teenage years in the 1990's, CDs were my go-to format and I have an overwhelming sentimental connection to that stuff. However, I've finally decided I'm going to rip it all as AIFF with dbPowerAmp this year, and sell the majority of it. It hurts me to even think about, but I'm literally paying rent ($1,440/year) just to store CDs and it's making less and less sense for me to keep doing that.

    So after I rip everything, my game plan is to contact local used-CD shops and propose a cheap deal (with an all-or-nothing policy like I did with the vinyl) - maybe $0.50 - $1.00 per CD. If that fails, I'll look into offloading to Decluttr, Second Spin, and Cash For CDs. Anybody have any experience with any of those guys?

    Absolute last resort, I'm going to look into CD Recycling Center of America (sounds serious) and just ship everything away for recycling.
     
  2. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    I recommend CD Recycling Center of America highly, as a last resort, if you have a bunch of discs that are otherwise unusable, unsellable, and un-donatable.

    A couple summers ago I did a lot of cleaning and purging (for example emptying a full 4-drawer filing cabinet of papers by scanning, recycling, and shredding; and selling about 10% of my CD collection).

    As part of that, I wanted to responsibly dispose of all the unusable CDs I had lying around: recorded CD-Rs and DVD-Rs I didn't need anymore; badly scratched or otherwise damaged music CDs; obsolete computer CD/DVD-ROM discs that came with equipment I no longer own, etc. I ended up mailing 50 discs to CD Recycling Center, and it cost me only about $6 for shipping.

    Normally I hate paying to recycle something, but CDs and DVDs are virtually impossible to recycle in any normal/local way, so to me it was worth it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2018
    crookedbill likes this.
  3. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    NEVER tell a grieving widow anything further than, "Can't promise anything, but I'll ask around for you. I think we both know, it was worth FAR more to your husband, than it will be to record dealers. Let me at least get the ball rolling for you..."
     
    tmtomh likes this.
  4. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    So it's been just about a year on this thread now, maybe @Tippy will stop by and tell us how his purge went. I got 50,000 ohms says Tippy hasn't sold 5% of the stash.
     
    ScramMan2 likes this.
  5. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    Tippy hasn't been seen since July last year. My guess is that membership of this site has meant more records and CDs entering their home than leaving.
     
    eddiel, Dave and DRM like this.
  6. DRM

    DRM Forum Resident

    Great post. Art and music are representational. And full of meaning.

    We can run but we can't hide.

    We may regret buying all that we have.

    Or regret creating what we have created.

    Yet...we bought it for a reason.

    And created it for a reason.

    Research has shown that memories evoked from listening to music can ward off Alzheimer's.

    It can help us stay in touch with our "younger" self.

    That's actually still a part of us.

    Facing life is so important.

    Not that I always do it.

    But...when I don't do it, I'm in conflict.

    Lots of great insights in your post.
     
  7. ukrules

    ukrules Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kentucky
    I used to sell to SecondSpin.com They are fine but are picky about what they want anymore. You will need to take the time to check the price on everything, though. Perhaps a UPC scanner might work...dunno.

    I heard some folks donation to charity and taking tax write offs. Good luck!
     
    Mr. LP Collector and crookedbill like this.
  8. ScramMan2

    ScramMan2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland OR
    Tippy was last seen: Jul 20, 2017. Must be busy selling somewhere.
     
  9. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    And in yours. Soul of a poet, bee-yotch.

    In a perfect world, all libraries will take your media donations* and give you credit for your cost to rest your remains. Library cards will be more intuitive (Pandor-esque, I suppose), and push further listening/viewing choices, as much as an educative tool as a personal satisfaction algorithm. (Imagine, "satisfaction" actually leading you to a higher plane of universal understanding. Isolationists in bunkers in the Northwest, for instance, being presented with the basic tenets of It Takes A Village, with none of the polarizing identity-association. Or, I suppose, :rolleyes: going into a massage parlor, and coming out with a brief experience with Yoga...?).

    Naturally, it will all fall apart under the mere threat that somebody would come in and ask the Library to move all The Beatles overflow out of the lobby and littering the aisles, over to their own section...:hide:

    (* well, maybe not the Andy Williams Christmas album, or Lifetime movies; I mean, that's just cruel...)
     
  10. Donal

    Donal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    Well, good luck. From my own experience in this, it's going to be like taking on an extra job if you try parsing them out. If you sell them in bulk, you might try not to expect much, because that is probably what you will get. I decided to just set my CD collection aside , and not be concerned with it. They ain't eating any grass. Not interested in parting with my LP collection.
     
    Dave likes this.
  11. BigBandForever

    BigBandForever New Member

    Location:
    North Carolina
    Don't sell off all of your music collection, or even a part of it unless you have some purpose or goal involved in what you are doing....and don't sell in bulk for pennies on a dollar......no purpose in doing that. I've been selling SOME of mine that last 3 months peace meal and been having a good time doing it, raising money to finance a venture that I don't want to pay for exclusively out of pocket.
     
  12. crookedbill

    crookedbill Forum Resident

    I’m currently paying $1,400 per year for a storage unit, for nine boxes of CDs (roughly 2,5oo CDs) that neither fit in my house, nor have seen the light of day in years. I’m currently paying/losing money, monthly, for CDs I already bought once before and don’t even see or touch anymore.

    Losing money is starting to outweigh my nostalgia and hoarding tendencies. After I rip everything to lossless files using dbpoweramp (300 down, approx. 2,200 to go), I have to offload all of it in bulk, ASAP.

    Will likely save my favorite/rarest stuff, though. Maybe a couple hundred CDs.
     
  13. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    When people tell you not to sell your collection, they usually assume you can store it around the house for free. It's makes little sense to pay $1,400 per year to store 2,500 that may on average be worth a buck apiece. I would start with the obvious stuff like R.E.M.'s Warner output (it will never be rare or expensive), probably selling in joblots. You can also use decluttr to determine if you have any rare items. Some of those 90s items can be very hard to find.
     
  14. Trace

    Trace Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington State
    Even if you give it away or donate it, you're still going to save $1400/year. Sometimes it's best to just RIP the band-aid off.
     
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  15. crookedbill

    crookedbill Forum Resident

    Yeah, I know. It's been an emotional/financial push and pull for me. My hoarding tendencies are outweighing common sense at the moment, but hopefully not for long. Ripping this stuff as fast as I can to AIFF using dbpoweramp. One box per month (one box down, eight to go). Figure I can be done by the end of the year and sell, donate, or recycle the collection in bulk quickly thereafter.
     
  16. mesfen

    mesfen Senior Member

    Location:
    lawrence, ks usa
    Amazon was a great place to sell, but since the great seller purge of last year my little store virtually shuttered; still have no idea why they did this, probably to control prices; the reputation of eBay has taken a hit ( bar wasn't that high) with onslaught of counterfeits.
     
    Mr. LP Collector likes this.
  17. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    With that many cds, if priced well, you should be able to sell them as a job lot pretty quickly.
     
  18. GroovyGuy

    GroovyGuy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Halifax, NS Canada
    IMHO, the more time and effort you put into it the more $$$ you will get out of it.

    If you don't want to do a great deal of work / spend a lot of time on it, find someone who will buy each collection from you in a "lot" transaction. You won't get top dollar as it will take them time and effort to process it and they will need to sell it at a profit. That said, it's fast and easy.

    If you want to get more $$$ for your items then you will have to sort, market, and sell them in smaller lots or individually yourself. This way you're selling directly to the "end user" who will pay the full market price for the items.

    A few years back when I decided to shed myself of most of my book collection I was still working and didn't want to spend all my free time sorting and selling items so I sold them to a book dealer I know. That worked for me as I was working 60+ hours as week and travelling for work and didn't want to spend my time at home on this project when I could spend it with my family.

    Bottom line - you need to do whatever will work for you once considering the big picture (time spend vs money returned). Best of luck with your "downsizing" :)
     
  19. Mr. LP Collector

    Mr. LP Collector Forum Resident

    I've been buying from Second Spin a fair amount from time to time. I wouldn't recommend going through them to sell right at this time, though I might be wrong. They closed their Denver store down about 3 weeks ago. I live in Western Colorado but whenever I would make music trips to the Mile High city I would always go in there for not only buying but also selling.

    And until the crash came with the cd stores I was always happy with what they offered me for cd's--ALWAYS! They were located in a high volume traffic area and had not only high rent but stupid high rent. Then the building owner wanted more. Sadly the store called it a day and what was more sad about it was the fact I was not aware of it. I was told that what didn't sell during the final days was shipped back to the Kentucky warehouse. And the place had stock--MY GOD they had stock!
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2018
  20. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    They must have been some pretty good books. I can barely give mine away!
     
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