@rvpiano Discogs site gives you opportunity to create your own collection, meaning to exactly catalogue it by edition and in the same time they provide you information about its resale value based on those same editions that were sold there.
You just need to read the number on your cd and with few clicks you will be ’building’ your personal collection, you will get the data for the lowest, medium and maximum amount for every cd.
Than, you may post all your collection for sale there, if you choose so. No trouble at all and when somebody buys any cd, you will get the money and than you send it.
I am still buying cd’s and the ones that are missing from my collection are sometimes quite expensive. Check the values of cd's in your collection, you might be pleasantly surprised. Best of luck
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Tomcy6,
Good way to look at it.
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@rvpiano
”I have to decide if I want to sell in bulk or individually. It seems a shame to have forked over so much money and wind up with nothing.”
Well, if you consider the hours, days, weeks spent searching for, buying, then listening to and appreciating the music on CD/vinyl you collected over a lifetime, that’s not really nothing.
I knew a guy once who used to collect little gummed pieces of paper used for postage in many countries before digitally-printed labels, another who collected rocks, “minerals, gems”. The value of a thing is what we (or a buyer) places in the thing, and we (most of us, anyway) don’t pursue our hobbies as a means of paying for our retirement.
I know what you’re saying though. The guy I bought my Thorens TD125 MkII turntable from several years ago got it from an estate sale. He also got about a thousand classical LPs he didn’t know what to do with. The deceased had been a conductor of a local symphony orchestra and had accumulated quite the collection of high-end audio gear.
None of which - obviously - would fit in his coffin. Imagine future archaeologists finding skeletal remains with remnants of (probably still intact and playable) LPs wondering what religious significance they held for primitive people.
I thought about offering him like ten cents an LP, but we discussed ways of selling on eBay, Discogs, a yard sale or at his antique shop over the next couple of years.
It could be worse for you though, it’s not like buying insurance that never pays off.
Good luck
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I’ve tried giving away Classical CDs as I burned them to a server. As per the OP, even libraries and charities aren’t interested. My heirs will be stuck with a few thousand.
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I try to sell mine but the job asked for doing it was too much for me and at a ridiculously low price...
Those who are not streaming or listening files buy only vinyls...
Digital is immaterial, no fetichism here, a vinyl album is a cult object and keep some value ...Even when it is on a wall and not playing ...
I dump all my remaining cd in bulk in a ONG for the poor ...many thousands ...😊
I now live with many thousands lossless files...
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I owned an estate sale company for 27 years and LP records where a hot item at our sales. There where a dozen or so regular buyers that would swoop in and buy most on the first day. I would price most of them at $2.00, up to $4.00 or $5.00, then would go 1/2 price on Sunday, however most good ones would go on the first day. CD's $3.00 ea. where not as much in demand.
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Lots of good advice here. If you don’t want to give it away, then catalog your collection. Create a photo album (cover art) and post it on Audiogon and USAM for sale. I know this is time consuming but there are lot of folks out there that still spins CD’s. BTW, I gave my previous collection of 1500 plus CD’s to Goodwill after ripping.
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Fittingly, I sold my LP collection and turntable to an antique store. They were also in the business of selling LPs in store and on eBay. I still have my CD collection as they weren't very interested, although they do sell used CDs.
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I have same dilemma, deal with hassle of cataloging and pricing individual cd's and vinyl or selling in bulk. For the vinyl I've done a bit of cataloging and discovered a few highly valuable recordings, would hate to let those go for pennies on the dollar. The bulk buyers know this, convenience has a cost. My cd's are all ripped so less of a challenge to sell these, I have sold in batches of like 20 on ebay, valued them individually and priced accordingly with some discount for the convenience of batch sale.
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Similarly, before I sold my LPs to the antique store, I went on Discogs and got a general idea of what they were worth. Several were high value and I pointed that out. I came up with a price that I would accept and still give the buyer a descent profit and at the same time knowing that many were probably worthless. He accepted my offer and we were both happy.
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In case anyone interested, I have been using CLZ Music app to catalog my LP, CD and Downloads collection. Great app and quick reference to what I own when I am shopping for more media.
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If you have the inclination and time, you could bundle your CDs into "lots" and sell them on Discogs/Ebay. So if you have several CDs of certain composers, bundle them like a box set and sell them that way.
The alternative is to trade them in for store credit and then sell the credit to someone else for cash and donate what you can't sell/trade in.
My friends were surprised when I told them I still buy CDs but it's because I'm looking for better sound than streaming, and some artists' back catalogs were never released on vinyl. And if I'm buying used/new from abroad, I prefer CDs as the chances of damaged vinyl are too great.
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@rvpiano Is your LP collection catalogued?
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I’ve bought a lot of CDs that do and did absolutely nothing for me (I used to experiment back in the old days) but I needed to buy them in order to find the jewels that gave me hours upon hours (for years) of enjoyment. Iris Dement, Allison Krause, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Cowboy Junkies . . . just a few of the hours of enjoyment that I was able to experience for years by experimenting. So if I wasn’t able to listen anymore for the rest of my life, starting today, and they all (and there ae a lot) wound up in the recyclable bin (starting tomorrow) I still would not consider it/them a waste.
However, here’s to hoping it doesn’t go that way.
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I buy cds to this day. I have a huge collection and I love it, and most likely I'll never get rid of it. Even though I do rip them and listen on portable devices, every now and again I play them on my system and I enjoy it tremendously. If you don't want/need the $ I would donate them to Goodwill or a similar local organization. Otherwise, like many suggested, if you have the time and patience for it, sell them as smaller lots online (eBay, Craigslist, etc.)
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How timely! I have an editorial in the February issue of TAS—the digital edition is already available—about selling my LP collection (1800 albums, 80% classical) to make room for the installation of bunk beds for my grandkids. There’s a West Coast dealer who sells very expensive turntables to wealthy individuals who often don’t own many records and will pay top dollar for big collections. (The dealer doesn’t take a cut; he just views this as a service he provides to an exclusive clientele.) If you are so inclined, you can probably bring in more cash by selling the valuable stuff separately. But that’s a lot of work (plus reduces the attractiveness of the rest of the records) and I’ll admit that I like the idea that my lovingly curated collection is largely intact and is being enjoyed by someone else on the the other side of the globe.
If this is of interest, send me a PM and I’ll put you in contact with the dealer.
Andy Quint
Senior Writer, The Absolute Sound
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Buddhism Universal Truth #1: Impermanence - Nothing lasts forever.
Rip all of your CDs to hard drive and listen to them from there. Make sure you have at least 2 full backup copies of your music data on different devices.
Take your CDs down to the record shop, get your 10 cents on a dollar store credit and be done with it. You’ll still have all of your music at home and you’ll get a few more at the record store while you’re there. Do this and you’ll save yourself a lot of angst.
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@latik Thanks for the referral on CLZ Music. They have an app for the Mac called Music Collector. Very nice interface and works great.
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If you have a community radio station, they might have use for them and you can write off the donation.
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@rvpiano
I am in the same situation, being 71 and not having cared for my most valuable material posession very well in my youth (my body). My great hope is that one of my kids or son-in-laws or any realtive will want them, as well as my system. I have listed most of my collection in DISCOGS, as has been mentioned.It’s a lot of fun and you can see what other members are selling the same release for. You can also see the high, low, and median prices that the release sold for in the past as well as when it last sold.
I was surprised how much some pople paid for some of my pieces, so if there is any chance you have some thing rare or valuable, check it out. You can also offer it for sale. I am not planning on selling much of my collection that way. Too time consuming but I am not going to toss out my Linda Ronstadt Live in Hollywood 2 LP set from Rino. It has sold for $99 and someome is currently asking for $199. Of course it also sold for $21 at some point. You will need to enter the bar code, catalog number, or matrix/runout code because it may make a big difference.
If I can’t find someone I know who will enjoy my stuff I would donate my collection to a Habitat For Humanity re-sell store. I know they are a true charity. Goodwill, not so sure they are 100% not for profit.
My system will be sold if necessary. Lots of ways to do that.
@kmcong I have 355 CDs and am fortunate to not have seen any rot....yet
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Back in the early 80's I traded all ~800 of my vinyl albums for about 20 CD's at a local shop. Over the years, my CD collection reached about 1200. Then I got back into vinyl again. To me the sound was preferable to CD's, so I took about 1000 of those CD's to the local Goodwill and started collecting vinyl. I have spent the last 8 - 10 years not only buying back all those albums I got rid of in the 80's, but another 700 or so on top of that. Anymore, I'll only play a CD when I want to take a nap....
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RIP them all to a music server and give the the CD's away. Have a yard sale. Take them to Goodwill. Sell the greats on ebay or reverb. Little by little they will be gone.
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I’ve gone around and around with this issue for some years now. I have approx. 1500 CDs and at least that many LPs. Over 1/2 (maybe 60%) of all of them are classical.
I’ve read a lot, talked to people in the business, schemed and planned how to convey all the LPs (stored in 9-10 heavy cardboard boxes) to this or that store that may/may not actually try to sell them. The paradigm seems to be A. drive 100s of lbs of LPs and/or CDs to the place; they go through it all, decide to sell <10%; then go pick up all the leftovers.
None of it works for me. I reluctantly concluded I’ll end up throwing them all out. Even that will either be expensive (pay someone to haul it all away) or effortful to the point of self-harm (after many shoulder surgeries, very hard to manage the boxes holding LPs).
I wish it weren’t this way, but it is & there’s no sense denying it.
PS: I no longer delude myself that there’s any money in all these recordings. I now look at it dead weight to be dealt with.
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@rvpiano
Great thread, thanks.
I originally planned to rip then store my CDs (because of copywrite infringement), but:
- I’m trying to declutter, ran out of room
- When I pass, hopefully in the far future, the CDs will go out into the world anyway after liquidating my stuff
So I’m now inclined to get rid of them after ripping.
Next - what to do with my many video DVDs, BluRay, and some VHS as the trend seems to be streaming
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Please consider ripping your cd's before selling or giving them away. By using flac or another lossless codec you can keep a collection that would take up many shelves or boxes in an external hd that's the size of a pack of cigarettes for future enjoyment.
Ripping cd's is somewhat time consuming, but there are many programs available to help rip and catalog the files, and many ways to playback and enjoy the music for years to come.
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Hi RVPIANO. I have a very large cd collection which I am always adding to for the right material. I am very partial to Classical works and would be very interested to purchase your collection once I've had a look at it.. I live in CT so we are close enough for me to shoot by and meet. Let me know if you have any interest. You can email me at robertboucher@charter.net. Bob
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I sold my CDs in bulk to Dclutter.com, but they were rock. Not sure about their ability to take classical, but it's worth a shot.
Keep in mind that LPs can be shipped media mail. I actually sold my remaining 50 LPs to someone on this forum and shipped them for about $20.
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I could never get away from owning physical media. I’d be too attached to my records and cd’s to part with them.
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I keep all LP's, but give away a few dozen CD's to friends every few months...
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Log them in Discogs and share list as collection. Selling individually is a job in itself.
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@rvpiano
Did you ask your local Friends of the Library org.? They often have book and music sales to raise money. This has nothing to do with the library collection.
Various charities have book/music sales. Independent radio stations, too.
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Even if you could take anything with you, your arms would be so stiff, you could not get them into your pockets.
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