Are CD's Pretty Much Worthless Now or Am I Over Obsessing?

No I didn't mean that .....of course they shouldn't offer much for CDs like Hootie and The Blowfish or that REM CD.

 

I accept that most of the CDs I buy will have little or no long-term value. However if anyone has Sapphire by John Martyn for $1.00 or even $5.00 I am buying

Tim

 

Even better! Prevents the clerk from overpaying! If the clerk buys hundreds of CDs a day (not uncommon), and over-pays by $100, they can effectively over-pay themselves out of their own job.

As a business owner, can you let one of your employees run up expenses haphazardly and without repercussion? Buying CDs is an inventory expense. The higher the expense, the less money for bills, payroll, etc. That is Business 101.

 

Should have sold the OOP stuff on the Hoffman Forum. But no shop will pay more then $2.00/3.00 per disc - tops.

 

Over in my DVD Collection page at Second Spin, they are offering me between $8-$10 for some Criterions that I have bought from them ...which I think that's fair .
If I was willing to sell them , which I am not.

 

And it should also be noted that some of these stores also make mistakes that benefit the customer.

Once FYE sold me, actually they gave me a CD FREE as a buy 1 get 1 free sale. And a week later I sold the CD back to them and they gave me $10 Bucks !!!!!!

 

This is just the way most 2nd hand stores want to make money. I've heard a similar story about someone trying to sell his stamp collection, while I had a similar experience trying to sell some vinyl. As long as there are enough people stupid enough to accept such ridiculously low prices they don't have to pay anything more than just that.

 

Yep, it happens.

I will admit: I have picked up several rare CDs over the years that I've sold here/ebay for $20+ profit. There's no way a store can price/buy every CD at the optimal market price, things are too dynamic. We can just hope things are geared in the right direction, everyone wins.

 

There are still people paying very high prices for CD's, but the neighborhood record store is toast. The internet just reaches so many more people.

Just last month, I bought those new Stones SHM-SACD's, so I decided to sell the old ABKCO hybrid SACD's. Looking at the Classifieds, it seemed like there wasn't much interest here, so I put them on Ebay. I was pleasantly surprised - I think they all sold for more than $25.

It's all supply and demand and it depends on many factors. Condition appears to be important, but the rarity of the title is critical. Michael Jackson's Thriller? $2.00 Thriller on SACD? $200. Diana Ross and the Supremes' No. 1s? $1.00 Diana's Baby It's Me? $100.

Heck, many of those old 80's Motown CD's sell for very high prices. Who would have known? The booklets were crap (my copy of the Temptations' Sky's the Limit actually has a photo of a jacket with ring wear!), and the sound was, at best, just passable. But, people want those CD's and there aren't too many of them around.

So, many CD's still have great value, but you need to find the people who want them - and the odds are pretty low that they frequent the neighborhood record store.

 

G'day,

I see a lot of cheap CDs around here at yard sales / thrift stores, but very rarely the stuff I want.

When I was last at the thrift store there was a bloke clearing out the CD racks and putting anything that had been on the shelf for two weeks or more into a large container. I asked where they were going and he replied "Into the garbage. This is the third container for tonight". They get so many CDs donated that they have to throw out about 500+ CDs per week. I also realized that there was no system to determine what had been sitting on the shelf for that length of time ... the bloke just hoovered up whatever he could to make way for incoming stock. I check there a couple of times a week but even so there must be hundreds of CDs that I never see going in the bin (and perhaps some rare stuff going into the landfill).

The point here is that the common, high-volume stuff is worthless compared to shelf space.

But all the stuff I want? Gonna cost me at least $10 or more from Amazon or ebay. One of life's cruel ironies, I guess.

--Geoff

 

I agree. I had never heard anyone talk about their collection as an "investment" until I came here, although people on this thread aren't getting too worked-up about it.

It sounds like CD prices have dropped dramatically in many parts of the country this year. NYC may be on the higher end now, although I find things all the time for $3.99 or $4.99 and $6.99 is pretty much top dollar in the used bins.

And I'm still buying. I'd much rather pay those prices than $10 for a FLAC download... I'm still out of the loop with paid downloads.

As roebeet says, music is a consumer product. I'm sure there are people here who've burned more money in tobacco than I've spent on my collection.

 

Try selling at a Hastings store if you have one in your area. I unloaded a bunch of CDs at the local one last year and got very fair prices, I thought. It was mostly good "name" stuff, but not much in the way of super-rare/desirable items, but all in all I probably got at least $200 over the course of 3 trips. (And this wasn't any huge number of discs - maybe 150 tops. But like someone said earlier in the thread, sometimes you seem to get better results by bringing in maybe 50 discs at a time instead of all of them in one huge batch.)

The thing at Hastings is you're completely at the mercy of their in-store system. If it doesn't appear in their computer when they scan the barcode, you're probably gonna get a nickel for it - so that means BMG/Columbia pressings and imports are generally worthless there, unless you get a cashier who's willing to manually enter the titles instead of group all the ones that don't scan up and just enter them as "bulk items." *But*, because of the way they do it, there's no chance of a guy lowballing you on other items. I've had cashiers react in shock when the computer came up with a higher buy-back price than they expected...sort of as though he'd have offered you a nickel for it if it were up to them.

Either way, their buy-backs seem much fairer than any of the other local outlets, who are more than happy to buy your vinyl for a penny (often while giving you attitude) and then have a $30 price tag on it the next week.

 

There are also many CDs that go for lots of money that the store buyers and the people selling them don't know they're worth a lot. Try finding a copy of the original Capitol Pal Joey (Frank Sinatra) for sale on the internet. It's almost impossible. I don't imagine anyone buying these or selling them to the store know that, so you'll still only get a buck for it at most. I got one sealed in the longbox for ten bucks, but that was a fluke.
I wouldn't expect a guy or gal buying discs to know that the Japanese Columbia Sinatra Reflections CD to be worth much, but, again - try finding a copy for sale on the internet.

 

How much are these specific CDs going for on Amazon Marketplaces?

If it is the Devo CD I think it is ("Live: The Mongoloid Years"), it goes for about $15.

 

I've found a Capitol Pal Joey in a used store. If you keep looking long enough, eventually someone will sell whatever you're looking for. Heck, just last month I found the 21CD UK Sinatra Capitol Collection in a little store in Oregon for $150. Why someone would pay a premium to import it and then dump it on the used market I'll never know.

 

We all know the mass market CD is practically worthless now, I have about 3,000 of them and can attest to that fact firsthand. Waiting and buying today used would have saved me several thousand dollars. I never purchased any of the limited edition audiophile CDs since the cost was more than I was willing to pay, over $25 in many cases. Funny but the $6 CDs I purchased from Yourmusic.com or other discount source are now worth $1 or less about 95% of the time but the expensive audiophile CDs have often held their value, even increasing in value often. Live and learn.

 

Maybe someone lost their job and needed some money...

 

I think the moral of the story here, at least as far as Amoeba is concerned, is that when you sell to a buyer who actually knows what stuff is worth and offers a fair price, get that person's name and ask for him/her the next time you go to sell stuff. The friend of mine who is a buyer at Amoeba has people asking for him all the time, and that's because he's a bit older and more knowledgeable about what stuff is worth. He doesn't give me a good deal simply because he's a friend, but because he just doesn't undervalue stuff. On the flipside, there are buyers who I would avoid at all costs, because they simply don't know what they're doing. My Amoeba friend even backed this up, pointing out a couple of buyers that are to be avoided.

The other issue is that for rare items that are worth a lot, even a reliable buyer at Amoeba is not going to give you what it's worth, and you're much, much better off selling it here or on ebay.

 

These kinds of actions could help clear the glut caused from downloads. Do you ever notice how a $5 disc on Amazon becomes $100 the minute it is OOP? I bet overall demand will rebound within 10 years, but like books, high prices will be continue to be commanded for first editions (or best quality versions) - not the overly compressed remasters or cheap copies coming out of Europe due to copyright expirations.

 

Music Exchange in London are the worst. ten years ago i took about 200 pop/rock cd's into their Notting Hill branch and they would only offer me £50. so that deal fell flat on it's face. another customer in the store followed me out into the street and offered me several hundred pounds for the lot. we went to a local pub and exchanged right then and there over a pint!

 

I just bought that disc, the Rhino Handmade version, for $10 + shipping off the Amazon Marketplace.

 

No but that doesnt mean you are'nt over obsessing.
Depends what's in your collection and where you sell it. Used stores stay in business by paying dirt for cd's or Lp's, some of the stuff then gets placed on ebay for 20 or more times what they paid for it.

 

Wow even to me $120 is not very good. I just brought in 11 cds to our local used store and I got $5 for 7 cds and $10 for my REM Fables Deluxe. They would not take 3 other titles though. Maybe being in the Midwest versus LA make a difference too.

 

I saw a CD copy of A Bell is a Cup by WIRE for $4.99 the other day. That's listed for $90 and up on Amazon, new or used. I have it in my collection and don't sell CD's, but I smiled when I saw it... I'm sure it made somebody happy (it was gone when I went back to the shop today).

I don't know that anyone would actually pay $95 for that CD, but if you listed one for 1/2 or 1/3 of that price on Amazon it would probably move.

 

Bottom line is this: If you are knowledgeable enough to know which of your CDs actually have real value in today's market, and if you still bring them to a place like Amoeba, then you are looking for something to get upset about.

Separate out the rare stuff and sell it here, or on Amazon or on eBay. And the rest you can either sell at your local store for pennies, or you can bundle it up into lots and get a little more on eBay.