Where would you sell your vinyl collection?


So....
Unfortunately after buying and fixing up a new house and finding we have another kid on the way the time has come to part with my vinyl collection. I just finished putting everything on Discogs. I ended up with 440 albums with Discogs suggesting the lot is worth a decent bit. Is Discogs pretty accurate value wise? Most are audiophile records: Mofi, Classic Records, Speakers Corner, Record Store Day Exclusives, box sets, numbered editions, 45 RPM, 180 or 200 gram, etc. etc. Heavy on classic Rock, Jazz and Blues. I’ve been collecting for ten years and have never sold a record. Most have only been played a couple times and been hanging out on bookshelves. Would you recommend selling on Audiogon? Discogs? Ebay? Amazon? Would it be possible to sell the whole lot at once for the sake of simplicity? I live in NJ not too far from Princeton Record Exchange which buys collections but I’m assuming their offer would be super low relatively speaking as a reseller? All suggestions needed and welcome I need to find the best way to make some cash for the family sooner rather than later. Thanks!
obsessivecollective

Showing 2 responses by whart

@dgarretson - I know those guys- total record hounds. Friendly with Ken G. who is quite a collector, not so much of 'audiophile' stuff, but more obscure jazz and prog. We've been trading notes for several years on records. good suggestion. 
Agree that any sale of the entire collection is going to yield pennies on the dollar. That's the nature of the business. 
The Hoffman forum has a very active classified section for members, but you have to have at least 50 posts to even access it. They are big on classic rock and audiophile stuff. 
I buy pretty frequently from E-Bay and Discogs, as well as private dealer sites. (obviously the latter doesn't really help you unless you have a web presence). There's also a fair amount of trade on Instagram, if I'm not mistaken, but I don't use it. Any approach which yields maximum dollars involves your time to post, deal w/ bidders, payment, shipping and issues that come up. 
I got rid of a ton of records via a guy in Woodstock, NY who was willing to pick them up, post them on sites, collect the money, handle shipping and send me a 50% check periodically. I trusted him and most of what I was getting rid of wasn't particularly valuable, it was voluminous though. (thousands and thousands of records over the course of a few years in anticipation of a move). I think Dgarretson's suggestion is excellent, particularly given where you live. That Philly crew is pretty serious!
For any out of print album, the price will not only be a reflection of condition, but timing of the market (which changes, sometimes drastically over the course of a decade), totally apart from outliers-- somebody could have just overspent on something, have had the hots for it, it could have been some WLP with a misprint signed by X, who knows?
Best way to gauge prices is probably to look at current listings on Discogs to start if Mint-; also look at Popsike which will still have outliers, but they also graph rise and fall in price historically. I know a number of instances where a record was worth several hundred at one time and is now worth less than 50 bucks; conversely, there are some that increase in value steadily. Impossible to generalize, though I just did.
PS: fastest way to sell it is to underprice it a bit once you’ve done your due diligence on pricing for a particular album. And if you don’t have feedback on Discogs, perhaps say you are liquidating your vinyl collection, and the records are pristine except where noted (if that’s the case); that you are a new seller but are grading conservatively. If you are play grading, that’s a plus. (more time/effort on your part).