Audio System Donation

That's a good question that most of us will have to deal with someday. You should be able to find a used record store that will buy whole collections. I have done that. Got rid of a bunch of old records that I did not want. The store bought the whole lot after looking through them to asses the relative value. Most were not worth much but it was a way to unload them without just throwing them in the trash and got a few bucks. Audio equipment can be sold here or taken to a used audio store much like music, you could even just donate it to them. It's to bad you don't have a younger person to hand it down to. That seems to be a common problem these days unfortunately.

Wow its great to be a crape hanger!!

Interesting dilemma, I also approaching retirement and although I have thought about it from time to time, I suspect neither offspring would be terribly interested. They either stream from their phones to wireless systems they have, or just through the tv. One is in California the other in Amsterdam so shipping would be exorbitant. Had considered maybe the local library for my CD's (gave up records in College) but as far as hardware my guess is one of them will have to sell it off either piece meal or as a system. Would hope someone would want the smaller components, pre, dsd, cd player. 

One possibility at least for the media side is to catalogue it all on something like discogs.
This gives a rough market value to each album based on sales of said album.
That way at least your estate if it ever came to that, would have some idea on value.
Also helpful if you decide to sell all to a dealer as touted previously, you have a bit of ammunition.
But best scenario is you outlive the equipment!

Enjoy!

  Similar dilemmas occur in many corners. My mother had trouble giving her silverware to anyone. I believe that the world has changed when we are unable to hand down what would have been beloved treasures in the past. 
 Once in a rare while, I find a young person that is really interested in real audio, and have at least once thrilled someone by giving a piece of equipment to them. Don't just trust that responsibility to someone else. 
 When I worked at a local college there were music students that had an actual interest in music.

Join a local audio society/club.  They should be worthy pallbearers.

Give it to Salvation Army thrift shop and keep on trucking!!

You might consider making arrangements to have it sold to a local audio store (or have them sell it on consignment) and have the proceeds go to your heirs. 

Give it to Salvation Army thrift shop

+1
Or other stores like this in your community which use proceeds to help people.

Hey I just turned 68 so I'm definitely playing on the back nine. I just ordered the Magnapan 0.7 speakers last week. Got my VAC PA 80 80 with ARC LS 15 pre amp thats been in storage for the past 10 years and figured out a way to set it up in my HT room. I had a dual set up with 2 channel and 5.1 but it didn't have much magic music wise. Hopefully getting back into tubes will cure that. Anyway I have accumulated a fair amount of gear over the years and my wife has now idea what we have of frankly dosen't care. It's not super end but probable worth close to $15k ish all in.
So I need to make a list for her so she can decide to sell or maybe donate to a local church. But they would have no idea what most of the equipment is especially the tube gear. I can hear it now " so that little box is a external DAC?? What's a external DAC??? Also I'm going to drag my 40 year old son over, throw he into my listening chair, fire up the tubes, DAC and .7's
and try to get him to peace out and JUST listen to a few songs of his choice.  Hopefully the penny will drop and he'll keep my gear in the family, or at the very least have an understanding on what I have put together over the years.
So keeping things in perspective, when I turned 63 I bought a dedicated Porsche 944 Turbo S track car and started doing HPDE events. Such fun!! My wife is very supportive, but thinks I'm nuts🤪🤑..............never too late!!

This may not work for you.........but my plan is to right now start selling
off all the "extra" amps preamps tuners CD players DACs integrated amps reel-to-reels that I've been collecting/using for the past several decades.  Boil it down to one system, which is still quite a bit of equipment.  At the appropriate time sell that as well and just go with a 
tube headphone amp and headphones using a streamer as source.
Still probably about $5-7K worth of gear, but can be put in the backseat of a car, as opposed to the truck it would take to move my gear now. No one else in my family has the room or the "room" for it. But they sure as hell enjoy listening to it.
Hopefully I'll know when this should take place. All the best to you.

@jrwaudio my new hero!!!!

for the OP think about where you might like proceeds from sale to go vs. heirs, are there music or arts events / organizations you might like to support ?

@tomic601 That's great as I've never been a hero before :  ))