What to do with a large collection

Even if you could take anything with you, your arms would be so stiff, you could not get them into your pockets. 

@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. 

Log them in Discogs and share list as collection. Selling individually is a job in itself. 

I keep all LP's, but give away a few dozen CD's to friends every few months...

I could never get away from owning physical media. I’d be too attached to my records and cd’s to part with them. 

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.

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

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.

@rvpiano 

Great thread, thanks.

I originally planned to rip then store my CDs (because of copywrite infringement), but:

1. I’m trying to declutter, ran out of room
2. 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 

@nicks25 

You’re welcome! 

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.

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.

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....

The Smithsonian???

@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

If you have a community radio station, they might have use for them and you can write off the donation. 

@latik  Thanks for the referral on CLZ Music.   They have an app for the Mac called Music Collector.  Very nice interface and works great. 

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.

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

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.)

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.

@rvpiano Is your LP collection catalogued? 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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...

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.

@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 

Tomcy6,

Good way to look at it.

@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

+1 musicfan2349,I don’t look at cds, vinyl or audio gear as an investment that I intend to sell one day and want to at least break even.

Finding the artists and music you love, shopping for the disk or having it come in the mail and then listening to it and enjoying it is where the value is.

If you can sell them, great, but, if you can’t, it seems that there are people here who will take them off your hands. There should be someone in the NYC area who would pick them up. You would have the knowledge that you have helped keep the music you love alive in a physical format.

As far as I know, you can’t take anything with you when you go, including money, so we’re going to have to leave everything behind one day.

"It seems a shame to have forked over so much money and wind up with nothing."

Remember, you "forked over" your money to be able to enjoy the music! If you didn't enjoy any of it, that would be one thing. But presuming you have, I'd say cheer up! 😉

Happy listening.

Vinyl records are not recyclable in normal recycling streams because they are made of PVC.  I would think a classical CD collection would sell as a lot, or subdivided into smaller batches (by label, composer, conductor) on ebay. I have purchased large lots, both vinyl and CD before. Rarities will always sell. I think Discogs might give you an idea about value. You might contact a local Auctioneer or Auction House. USPS has inexpensive Media Mail rates. It will take a little effort... If you want Zero Effort hire someone to take them to Goodwill, they have a corporate structure that can extract value from "collectables".  Other (non-corporate) thrift stores recognize LP and CD, and books as value streams, some more eager to do so than others (major metropolitan areas have a stronger used market). It surprises me that no stores (used record stores) would make an offer on a collection. I'm always sad when someone liquidates... but it is a new opportunity for someone else. It might be helpful for members here to see a list.

@kmcong I have a not "huge" collection of about 1200 CDs from the 1980s to today. Out of all of those I think I had 3 that got "CD rot" due to oxidation of the aluminum layer due to a pin hole in the acrylic plastic.  3 out of 1200 isn't too bad, I think. Fortunately, I was able to replace those 3 over time via Discogs and was glad. 

To all who have made offers, you must be prepared to pick them up.
‘But I really haven’t decided which way to go yet.

I’m located on Long Island, New York.

I’ll take the CD’s. Just recently got a new disc player and really enjoy classical music

I wonder how many of those cds have "cd rot"? I have a collection of around 500 cds that go back to the 80s. I'm finding that a few from the 80s and 90s have "self destructed". I have always stored them properly,  but it's my understanding that some of the materials contained in the cds, especially the older ones,  cause the layer containing the digital info to corrode.  It appears to the eye as a "cloudiness " on the surface. I'm curious as to how many other collectors are experiencing this.

Our local friends of the library group does book sales where they also sell CDs. There are often many classical CDs. You won't get any return on your investment but it will do a great deal of good for the local library. 

I too have some CDs I’d like to get rid of but I listen to CDs about as much as I listen to vinyl. I tried the streaming route but did not like it and sold my streamer and DAC. Of the 3 formats, streaming was the worst sounding with vinyl the best and CDs a close second. I continue to buy CDs because they are less expensive than vinyl and there is more choices than vinyl. Plus there are some amazing CD players available these days.

I gave away hundreds of Cds years ago..... now I'm buying them back.... who knew?

@OP. This post is intended as a positive comment not a criticism. The real value of a music collection collection is in the listening pleasure derived it. Entertainment software of all kinds is a rapidly depreciating commodity in terms of resale value and always has been. That said, there is still plenty of demand for CD's at what economists call the market clearing price.

I would consider a bulk purchase from you. Especially the LPs, but also the CDs, however you want to do it. I have bought two classical collections locally for personal use not resale. Mm121666@yahoo.com Thanks, Mark

Sell them on Steve Hoffman's Classified forums. They will likely sell there...

If it's too much time and trouble to sell individually, give them to someone who will list them for you, let him pay you a commission. 

I recently bought a Schiit Urd to see how the "Unison" USB in my Bifrosnt 2/64 sounded. It's amazingly good and I'm thoroughly enjoying my large but recently mostly ignored CD collection again. 

Donate them to Good Will.