What to do with a large collection
I have thousands of CDs and records and am looking to get rid of most of them. i can’t possibly listen to them in my remaining years and my wife doesn’t need them. CDs, it turns out, are not very viable these days, and if you want to sell them to a dealer you can only get store credit!! And, if as in my case, the collection is 90% classical, it seems they will be impossible to unload. Since CDs are antiques these days, I can’t imagine ANYONE who would want them. The only alternative I can see is the garbage. When you consider just how much of an investment they were it’s indeed a sobering realization.
Records are indeed “in,” but how desirable are classical LP’s?
Any suggestions?
+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. |
@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 |
”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 |
