Selling or otherwise disposing of CDs - suggestions

[Mal]

[Boxes] very few sales despite very reasonable prices, I have closed my marketplace account.

Why not sell the boxes CD by CD on ebay? I might be tempted to buy a few, to sample them, or fill holes in my collection.

[Constantbee]

Nobody's mentioned Discogs (est. in the US in 2000 and now an international music cataloguing database and marketplace). I used them once when I needed to get hold of something quickly (Reich - Vermont Counterpoint on EMI Classics). It seems to work best for people with a high volume of purchases/sales who list their existing collections and put what they're looking for on a wants list. The grading system is simple enough and covers all media types btw. As at the time of writing they have just over 560,000 classical titles listed (cf rock and pop with well over 2 million), so there's plenty of choice, but having a wants list seems to put the price up. Simple economics of demand and supply, I suppose. The more people looking for your recording the more you can ask for it. I paid more for the CD than the one I just missed out on on ebay the week before, for example. Also, I found what I wanted fast but had to wait a couple of weeks for it to arrive. Might use them again but I wouldn't want to get more involved with them.

[Mal]

Another problem with Music Magpie is that the 2 for £2 deal is liable to lead to cracked cases because the CDs are jammed into one envelope so you have one hard surface against another hard surface so cracking is more likely (not every time of course, but it has happened to me...) I complained about this and they gave me a refund of £1.50, which is enough to pay for new cases, so is a good response. As with Jayne, they didn't want to chat about improving the service... too busy making money to chat I guess... and there is big money in it:

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/music-magpie-cd-dvd-reselling

"musicMagpie would buy a used CD of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon for 46 pence and sell it for £11.31. The very first CD musicMagpie ever sold, ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits, is still its biggest seller. The retailer buys in used copies for 35 pence each and sells them on its Amazon store for £6.95."

Blimey, this is a license to print money. Why isn't someone taking them on properly? (There were a couple of other companies taking them on, last time I looked, but offering equally bad prices.)

The founder of Notting Hill Record Exchange suggested a 2:1 sell:buy ratio in an interview, which sounds fair (i.e., you buy a VG CD for £12, sell it for £6 to NHRE, in theory.) In practice, Foyles has a 3:1 ratio, with NHRE about the same. I pulled them up about this and they said the cost of central London store, and increasingly bad sellers market, means only 3:1 is supportable. Which makes some sense, I guess.

Anyone encountered the Northern Firm ReNew? They have a shop in Darlington and make a big thing about reselling CDs like new - scrubbing the cases and disks, resealing them... I guess they would probably reject the grottier MM offerings or no way would Like New be possible. I've only bought one from them, on Amazon, and it was Like New. I'd buy from them again.

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/entertainment-store-gives-away-entire-12463701

[Dave2002]

Having discovered the shop at the local tip I went in there again the other day. There was a pile of CDs on a ledge, and down below there was a box also containing CDs. Someone was rummaging through the box. I glanced at the pile which looked a bit of an eclectic mixture, some John Coltrane and a few other names I recognised, and I noticed a piano CD by Gilels so pulled it out. This prompted a "those are mine" response from the guy on the floor, so I apologised and moved on.

I did wonder then if he was actually going to listen to the CDs, or simply buy them at 4 or 5 to the pound, then sell them on with a very substantial mark up. If I buy from charity shops or even the dump, the CDs usually do get played, which is more than can be said for some of the CDs and CD boxes I buy new from other regular sources.

[bluestateprommer]

Hello, bsp. I hinted in #2 that there maybe an internal market amongst the many collectors on these boards, and exchanging our unwanted discs may be an option. Funds transfer may well be an issue between UK and US, but if we are trading discs then the barter system should work. Also shipping costs can be reduced if jewel cases are removed and packaging kept to a minimum. I have a list which I can be PM! I have stopped selling on Amazon for the reasons you state, and they are a little greedy with their cut!

I can see why you would throw in the towel on selling on Amazon. With the changes, some of my formerly listed items got automatically removed, including at least one that was in no way remotely "popular" in terms of sales ranking. However, in a few cases, some alternative listings of the same product opened up, which did not requiire "Popular Music" approval. I was able to relist items that way, and even sold one or two of them. I also might be an outlier even in a niche genre on Amazon, in that many of my listings aren't of core repertoire, but are pretty esoteric. This makes them easier to list, to be sure, but it also means that they'll take longer to sell, if they sell. Hence the "long game" approach. For example, I haven't tried to sell a Beethoven symphony cycle yet on Amazon, and it's a pretty sure bet that such sets will require "Popular Music" approval.

With the general comments on Amazon and elsewhere regarding stated product condition vs. actual product condition, I can relate. I've gotten a few "Very Good" items from used sellers on Amazon that I myself, were I selling them, would rate as "Good", because of scuffs on the CD's, cracks in the CD cases, situations like that. I'm probably the polar opposite of most sellers in that if a CD is less than immaculate in appearance, I'll say so in the description, to excess, and I'll down-rate the product accordingly. Interestingly, particularly with offbeat repertoire and recordings, some folks are still willing to buy from me anyway . But then I'm picky about CD conditions, and I wouldn't want to sell CD's to anyone under anything less than honest disclosure of conditions that I don't demand of myself.

For HD, I might contact you about those Kubelik box sets by PM, to see what you have on offer to a good home. However, as noted earlier to cloughie, trans-Atlantic shipping costs may be a concern. I'm not wired into the modern age enough to figure out funds transfer at minimal inconvenience to both of us, but we can figure that out if it comes to that.

[HighlandDougie]

For HD, I might contact you about those Kubelik box sets by PM, to see what you have on offer to a good home. However, as noted earlier to cloughie, trans-Atlantic shipping costs may be a concern. I'm not wired into the modern age enough to figure out funds transfer at minimal inconvenience to both of us, but we can figure that out if it comes to that.

Alas, Kubelik Symphony Edition is going to a good home - but maybe this:

https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Recordings-1963-1974-Rafael-Kubelik/dp/B000BV5RDS

I'm sure that I can cope with transatlantic postage (I hope - in these days when the poor old USPS attracts the attention of POTUS). The original Kubelik Mahler set (with everything in an individual jewel case) is just a bit too bulky.

[Dave2002]

Someone is selling some tranches of CDs, LPs and sheet music via Frasers Auction Room this week. Maybe a £5 bid would get someone around 150 CDs - lot 35, plus a few others lot 64, 65 and 91 - http://www.frasersauctionroom.co.uk/.../far150618.pdf

Probably a house clearance sale.

Conversely this might be a way to dispose of CDs - though I suspect that hardly any financial return would result.

Some of the CDs for auction are quite good, but - surprise, surprise - I have most of them already. Bids in by lunchtime tomorrow, Friday.

[Dave2002]

Re msg 52

I did try a low bid - under £10 - for the CD lot at the auction, on the grounds that I could filter out the ones I didn't want at all and pass them on. Somewhat surprisingly - to me at any rate - the winning bid was considerably larger than mine. It seems that there might have been something in there which which someone really wanted - just one or two CDs. Now if I could identify similar "magnets" and mix them in with bundles of more common stuff, then that would be a way to dispose of swathes of CDs, and also recover some money. The problem with this is that it is impossible to predict what might really interest others to push the collection price up, and make a modest return.

[bluestateprommer]

One carbon-footprint heavy measure that I do once a year to try to unload CDs is to bring them to Academy Records on my annual NYC trip. There, however, I try to do the same thing when I sell on Amazon, namely to bring relatively unfamiliar items that would stand out among the reams of core repertoire recordings out there. Surprisingly, Academy Records hasn't always taken such material, so that I have to lug the unwanted stuff the rest of the day and bring it back home.

One separate experience there some years back was when I saw a younger couple bring in boxes and boxes of CDs to try to sell, except that a lot of them had scuffs and such. The couple had burned much, if not all, of those CDs to their computer (maybe hence the scuffs and scratches). The Academy staff there wisely declined all that material, but also suggested that if the couple really wanted to get rid of those CDs, they could bring them to the Juilliard School and give them away, i.e. "free CDs to good home".

....maybe this:

https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Recordings-1963-1974-Rafael-Kubelik/dp/B000BV5RDS

I'm sure that I can cope with transatlantic postage (I hope - in these days when the poor old USPS attracts the attention of POTUS). The original Kubelik Mahler set (with everything in an individual jewel case) is just a bit too bulky.

For HD, I've been trying to reply by PM to say "Yes" to your very kind offer of this Kubelik set, but the PM function has been dysfunctional when I've tried to reply. I haven't exhausted my quotient of space, or maybe something else is set wrong. Hopefully you still have that set on hand, and we can work out PM communication on this. But if I missed the chance, then my bad.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Well - anyone who burns their CDs to a computer and then sells the originals, is committing an act of piracy.

[HighlandDougie]

One carbon-footprint heavy measure that I do once a year to try to unload CDs is to bring them to Academy Records on my annual NYC trip. There, however, I try to do the same thing when I sell on Amazon, namely to bring relatively unfamiliar items that would stand out among the reams of core repertoire recordings out there. Surprisingly, Academy Records hasn't always taken such material, so that I have to lug the unwanted stuff the rest of the day and bring it back home.

One separate experience there some years back was when I saw a younger couple bring in boxes and boxes of CDs to try to sell, except that a lot of them had scuffs and such. The couple had burned much, if not all, of those CDs to their computer (maybe hence the scuffs and scratches). The Academy staff there wisely declined all that material, but also suggested that if the couple really wanted to get rid of those CDs, they could bring them to the Juilliard School and give them away, i.e. "free CDs to good home".



For HD, I've been trying to reply by PM to say "Yes" to your very kind offer of this Kubelik set, but the PM function has been dysfunctional when I've tried to reply. I haven't exhausted my quotient of space, or maybe something else is set wrong. Hopefully you still have that set on hand, and we can work out PM communication on this. But if I missed the chance, then my bad.

Fear not! Address received - will post tomorrow.