Selling CDs in a job lot - worth it?

[Brainaddict]

So I've got about 50 CDs I'll never listen to again - mostly late 90s to early 2000s indie. I can't be bothered to sell them individually, and don't imagine that they are worth very much (I don't even know anyone who listens to CDs, let alone in that particular genre of music). Is there any way to get a reasonable price for them as a job lot or should I just accept they aren't worth anything?

 

[killer b]

It's unlikely many of them have much value, but it's probably worth checking the prices on discogs either way. As with anything, rare CDs are worth money, easily available ones are worth fuck all. If they're all in the fuck all camp, it's unlikely to be worthwhile trying to sell them as a job lot I reckon.

 

[Brainaddict]

They are all easily available. I had very NME tastes at the time (think Mogwai, Grandaddy, and a few others I'd still defend, but also Morcheeba, the Vines, and other has-beens). They go for £2 to £4 on discogs it seems, so maybe if I could be bothered to sell individually I'd get something, but it's hardly worth the packaging/posting labour.

 

[skyscraper101]

Take them to a CEX or something. You might get £2-5. Or charity shop them. Unelss you've got something thats hard to come buy it just won't be worth the hassle doing anything like listing and posting CDs.

 

[platinumsage]

MusicMapie them. You can barcode scan them with your phone into a box with free shipping.

 

[Brainaddict]

MusicMapie them. You can barcode scan them with your phone into a box with free shipping.

Ha, thanks, an interesting idea to try but I put in a couple of barcodes and they were worth 16p and 13p

 

[platinumsage]

Ha, thanks, an interesting idea to try but I put in a couple of barcodes and they were worth 16p and 13p

Well, that would be £6.50 reward for sending them to good homes. Better than binning them.

 

[killer b]

surely there are no good homes for Morcheeba CDs in 2022?

 

[Fez909]

It's unlikely many of them have much value, but it's probably worth checking the prices on discogs either way. As with anything, rare CDs are worth money, easily available ones are worth fuck all. If they're all in the fuck all camp, it's unlikely to be worthwhile trying to sell them as a job lot I reckon.

Often it's hard to know what's 'rare' though, which is why it's worth checking them on Discogs, as you said.

My cousin made a load of money recently selling her old Spice Girls singles. I assumed that they'd be worth fuck all, given the numbers they sold in, but they went for quite a bit.

 

[Fez909]

btw, the Discogs app has a barcode scanner, too, to make it easier to lookup the correct version etc.

 

[Brainaddict]

Highest price I've been able to find so far is Godspeed You Black Emperor! – F♯ A♯ ∞ going for £7

 

[killer b]

My cousin made a load of money recently selling her old Spice Girls singles. I assumed that they'd be worth fuck all, given the numbers they sold in, but they went for quite a bit.

I wonder why - a CD single of Wannabe seems to float around £5, which seems insane.

 

[ddraig]

I've added the odd cd to my discogs and been surprised at some of the prices, even had messages offering to buy the odd one

 

[Brainaddict]

Highest price I've been able to find so far is Godspeed You Black Emperor! – F♯ A♯ ∞ going for £7

And having posted this I suddenly have a desire to hang on to this CD for nostalgia reasons - I listened to it almost daily for about 9 months. In my defence, I listened to Godspeed a hundred times more than I did Morcheeba. I wasn't entirely without taste, just got lured into some duff things by the evil NME.

 

[Spymaster]

They go for £2 to £4 on discogs it seems, so maybe if I could be bothered to sell individually I'd get something, but it's hardly worth the packaging/posting labour.

They probably don't go for that, that's just what people are asking for them. I was in a similar position and ended up putting almost 500 CDs in some boxes and sticking them in the loft.

 

[skyscraper101]

Years ago I bought a massive CD wallet which holds 800 odd discs, and just chucked all the plastic jewel cases from my CD collection, and kept the disc, artwork and back sleeves and put them all in their. It zips up and has a handle and is now easily stored. Saves a hell of a lot of space.

I open it up occasionally and TBH, the only CDs I'd miss now are the the mixes and compilations ones which you won't find on Spotify. Pretty much all the well known artist albums are worthless to me if they already exist on spotify (unless they came in some super limited edition version)

 

[Brainaddict]

They probably don't go for that, that's just what people are asking for them. I was in a similar position and ended up putting almost 500 CDs in some boxes and sticking them in the loft.

It's a bit mad isn't it? At £10 a CD (and I expect many cost more than that) that's five grand's worth of CDs, now borderline worthless.

 

[Spymaster]

It's a bit mad isn't it? At £10 a CD (and I expect many cost more than that) that's five grand's worth of CDs, now borderline worthless.

Yep. You don’t want to bin them because they represent half a lifetimes worth of collecting, but they’re useless and practically valueless.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Tape them before getting rid, that way you keep the music

 

[Elpenor]

I still but CDs at charity shops, by and large they’re worth now what the charity shop sells them for, sometimes they’re 4 for £1. I did pick up one that is worth £45 the other week, considering selling it

You’ll be interested to know every charity shop has at least 2 Dido CDs!

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I wonder why - a CD single of Wannabe seems to float around £5, which seems insane.

It is weird, but…

A lot of them would not have been looked after at the time?

Also I reckon it’s music a lot of people will have felt that they had grown out of or wanted to distance themselves from? So will have got rid of.

Then nostalgia in the lockdown maybe…

 

[DJWrongspeed]

Straight to Charity shop. The time spent selling them won’t be worthwhile. I’ll be doing same soon.

 

[Brainaddict]

So I realised my nearest music exchange shop was only 10 mins away so I took them in. Now flush with cash after getting a grand total of £12 (and that was with a few dvds thrown in)

The guy said if I'd bought them on vinyl I'd have got twice that for each album. And there was me in the late 90s laughing at nostalgic dinosaurs buying vinyl....

 

[xenon]

Can CDs be recycled?

I've kept them all but binned the cases as the braille labels had mostly fallen off and were variously broken. I did look after them but 20 odd years for crap plastic is a long time.

Now I just stream or occasionly buy HQ downloads.

 

[killer b]

So I realised my nearest music exchange shop was only 10 mins away so I took them in. Now flush with cash after getting a grand total of £12 (and that was with a few dvds thrown in)

The guy said if I'd bought them on vinyl I'd have got twice that for each album. And there was me in the late 90s laughing at nostalgic dinosaurs buying vinyl....

Way more than double - even some pretty ordinary indie albums from the 90s go for really stupid money now - it's in the sweet spot of there being relatively few albums pressed up as CD was king, and the people who were teens in the 90s now being nostalgic collectors of the music of their youth and having money to spend now they're all in senior management positions

 

[killer b]

eg: on discogs, The Vines Highly Evolved goes for 62p on CD, or £25+ on vinyl, Morcheeba's Big Calm, median price on vinyl is 70 quid (jesus)

 

[Spymaster]

So I realised my nearest music exchange shop was only 10 mins away so I took them in. Now flush with cash after getting a grand total of £12 (and that was with a few dvds thrown in)

Don’t spend it all at once!

 

[StoneRoad]

Not a music fan, but something similar has happened to non-digital cameras and associated paraphernalia.
A few, like Arriflex, still maintain value ...

What is both amusing and dreadfully sad at the same time is the range of mis-labelling on a certain on-line auction site.
Quite obviously in some cases, a person is selling stuff out of [grand]parent's attic and often has bugger all idea of what they are looking at.

 

[pug]

I chucked the boxes and put mine in a wallet thing when I went to mp3, i have a cd player in the car now so i keep them in there. I saw a charity shop selling all theirs 10 for a pound the other day. DVDs are going the same way.

 

[Spandex]

I like CDs. I still buy and play CDs. I bought the new Horace Andy album on CD last week. They cost half the price of vinyl and not much more than a dowload. If I download a bunch of tracks I still burn them to CD and add them to the shelf so I'll find them again in the future.

My problem with streaming is remembering what I've listened to. I was listening to some excellent Belarusian techno on Bandcamp a couple of weeks ago and already fuck knows who it was by or what it was called, it's just a memory now, gone like hearing a cool track in a club at 3am. With CDs I can look through my shelves and find something I've forgotten about and think hey, I love this and put it on and memories of the time I bought it come flooding back.

CDs seem to be in a similar position as vinyl in the 90s, with loads of people bemused that anyone would continue buying it, loads of bargains to be picked up as no-one wants CDs any more. I sold a load of vinyl in the 90s when I was skint and thought well I'll never want to listen to this again, but now I do and it's gone. I want my Iron Maiden albums back.

In 20 years CDs might be worth something again as everyone threw theirs out and hardly anyone buys new CDs. Not that I care about cost. I just want the music. Or maybe they'll go the way of shellac and I'll just be a dinosaur with cluttered shelves.