Oops, HOUSE FLOOD!! Audiophile vinyl collection got soaked. Where do we go from here?


I guess the lesson is you never can store things too far off the ground.  We had a house flood, and our late-70s-early-80's audiophile vinyl collection got soaked.  We removed platters and spread the covers throughout the house (pics are enough to make a collector cry), stuffed and dried them, re-glued parted seams, and then pressed them for several days.  Cover art itself survived mostly in good shape, but the cardboard stock pretty much all shows effects, varying amounts of bent corners and wrinkling, none of it good.  So we're left with a collection of pristine platters, about 50 never played, the remaining roughly 125 played once for transcription to tape.  We still have all displayed (but on higher shelves, lol), but the brand-new cover look overall is gone.  We're in our 70s, at the point where divesting is more on our minds than continued investing, so any advice on how we might market all this would be appreciated.  We'll obviously suffer a huge discount from what we had, but have emotionally gotten past that, and life moves on ...    
stanr
All-

my condolences to anyone whom lost his collection to the hazards of Mother Nature.  I barely escaped Hurricane Katrina w/ mine.

Concur w/ the panel- eBay will reach your largest audience with a "lot" sale.
Let the consumer offer you a price.  Audiogon would be a good 2nd option.

God Speed
Stanr ...

Sorry to hear about your loss ... 

I have thousands of LP's that I've collected over the years. I have many mint condition albums ... but I have albums that have really good covers, even mint covers with vinyl that's pretty noisy. I'd be happy to buy a bargain priced LP with a damaged cover in order to get the mint LP that resides inside of that cover.

I'll bet there's a lot of serious collectors out there who would buy some of your albums off of Ebay. Just tell it like it is: "Cover damaged in flood - record is mint." 

OP
Sorry about your loss.
My lps were ruined in a house flood on August 6, 1985.  I remember the date because my wife had a C section that day.  I was in Grad school, broke, couldn't replace any of them.  There were no second hand stores selling lps then, and worse, no streaming services.  When I finally had a little cash to spend the stores were stocking CDs and my tt was effectively worthless.  I held onto he moldy, smelly lps for a few years but they were unplayable and the wet cardboard stank when it dried.
  You have to keep in mind that what matters is the Music,not the playback medium.  With a streaming service, you can have unlimited access to titles for between $10-$20/ month.  Meanwhile with the current interest in vinyl means that lps, new and old, are available in multiple outlets, so you can start collecting again while still being able to have easy access to your music.
  I would toss the rotting, germ filled slabs of petroleum.  Take it from one who has been there
Insurance paid up when I had a loss. Fortunately my insurance agent had explained the need for cataloging so at his suggestion I allowed him to hire a student ,of his choice, to create an alphabetical list (I paid of course) with details. I only lost a few, to a city caused sewer back up; but one was a 'very' early and rare Elvis Presley. Due to the independent documentation I was properly compensated. Prior documentation is essential for insurance. Perhaps a good summer student opportunity for those of you with valuable collections and gear.
Really appreciate all your comments.

I was fortunate in this incidence in several ways, First, the flood water was overflow of a foundation-level sump (sump pump had failed), so was clean and odorless runoff from the outdoor foundation drain tiles. Second, the albums were shelved reasonably high above ground, so only the bottom few inches were under water, moisture wicking up the cardboard sides being the real cause of damage. Third, catching the problem quickly allowed (i) immediate removal of vinyl to safety; (ii) spreading of paper-towel stuffed covers all over the house for individually-effective and odorless drying; and (iii), after several days’ pressing, substantial avoidance of cardboard warp and cover art damage. Finally, it helped that I have maintained over the years an extremely detailed excel spreadsheet for the 173 albums (378 data rows x 30 spec columns,1 row per platter side, many multi-platter albums), so had all that was needed to support a somewhat sort-of reasonable insurance recovery.

On the subject of divesting, responses so far have suggested either eBay or here on Audiogon as listing sites. There’s no way I’ll sell the albums piecemeal (well, other than if really good individual album offers are received), am way too old to administer all that. So I’d appreciate any other suggestions that would ease selling the whole collection as a single lot. Using album prices obtained pre-flood over several recent years from all over the net, the individual album lot total amounted to just over 14k, of which I was prepared to negotiate down to somewhere near half. Now post-flood, with covers substantially respectable and vinyl still pristine, I guess I’d consider some amount near half of the half, at least as a starting point. I certainly don’t want to be giving anything away, and it’s nice to think the value really lies in the music, but realistically collectors are looking at the whole package, so guess I have to be prepared. One thing for certain, it will be an interesting negotiation.

Any other suggestions, please bring them on. Anyone caring to see the spreadsheet, just ask. Again, thanks to all you responders, been a big help in accepting the reality of the thing, and in swallowing hard.