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?

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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. 

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. 

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.

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.)