Hi all. Anybody ever sold off their vinyl collection?
Looking to get rid of most of mine, to declutter etc. Mid-life crisis clearout vibe. (My collection is in ‘DJ worn’ condition, and doubtful very valuable, so sadly i won’t be able to subsequently afford a motorbike to complete the stereotype).
Never really done it in bulk before, just the odd LP here and there. Is Discogs the way to go? Or record dealers? Don’t care to get market value per se, but not looking to be ripped off either. I have them all catalogued on Discogs anyway, so i guess that’s a start.
I sold many thousands of mine in bundles. I think i sold them in batches of 1000 then the last one was a 500 batch. Luckily each one was bought locally by people i knew which it smooth and easy fro pick up etc
I am going to sell some again soon and im dreading Discogs but dont think i have a local buyer. If going down Discogs route make sure to grade properly and list any small defects as people will ask for refund otherwise
I donated my crates [keeping only a couple choice collections] to my local record shop, Zulu Records, in Vancouver. They have a large second hand market.
I’ve been considering this as well. I think taking them to a local record store is probably your best bet, unless you can find a collector who just wants a shitload of stuff in a given genre.
This is the way. When a record shop in Colorado was closing it’s doors it would sell lots of 100. You could tell them what genre you were looking for and they’d put something together. Cost me $100 per lot.
Where do you live? Find cratediggers in your area.
Friends in Detroit love to wholesale buy collections of varying levels of use to sift through, pick out what they want and part out the rest.
If you can handle Discogs, that can be fine. But you’ll need to create more of a spreadsheet of what you have, what it’s worth, and what’s worth the most energy to part out first.
Chatting with your local shop about donating is also a cool thought
Some years ago I have been in the same situation to sell the majority of DJ-worn records I owned. Selling to dealers in bulk was never an option considering individual values and because of ridiculous low(est) price offerings. So eBay and mostly Discogs it was for me. Depending on where you live it’s getting more and more complex selling there and across the globe. And Discogs just recently decided to get even more greedy on fees they collect.
Ideally you have to make sure to grade everything carefully and rather strict following goldmine standards, calculate shipping costs, gather individual prices, clean the records if required, and have proper envelopes/boxes for shipping.
I sold at least a few hundred 12" over the last few years this way, and most of them closer to their ideal value than just a few cents dealers typically would offer.
Yeah, I’ve sold bits of my collection to record stores. Even factoring in that you’re probably going to have to drop them off and come back after the owner’s had a chance to evaluate them, it’s going to be a lot less of a headache than selling online. No shipping. No weird buyers.
I live in a small rural town in England, so selling in bulk to anybody may be difficult, though i do like the idea of parcelling up 50-100 piece lots. We have a record shop here, and there are dealers around looking for collections, so i may end up trying that route. I know of another small record shop in a nearby town as well actually.
Discogs seems like a possibility to get more per piece, but with that comes more work. I also suspect a lot of what i have to sell would just sit there without much interest.
Looks like a lot of them will probably be heading to the charity shops.
Ideally i could take them to the record shop for consignment (they sell them on my behalf and we share the money), but i don’t know if that’s how they operate. Will have to make inquiries.
England has always been my top selling country! Do packages of 10/20/50 and list all that’s included and put it up to ebay with a starting price that seems reasonable to you.
I did that with the 12”s that weren’t too special in the beginning. Worked out quite well.
Personally, all it takes is one weird buyer or one screw up in shipping to put me off of selling anything online for a while. So if I’m just trying to get rid of some stuff and I’m not mad about making less money then I would rather just skip that whole process.
I run a second hand record/book/comic/videogame/movie/toy -shop here in Finland and I always tell my customers that if you want top dollar you need to do the work and sell the stuff one by one, take the photos, email with every single buyer, grade your stuff appropriately and still be ready for some people returning your merch because they think it’s not VG+.
What we as a small local shop offer, is easiness, simplicity and cash instantly in your pocket. No hassle, no returns, no nothing. Naturally we are a business and our business model is to make some profit. With that profit we pay our salaries, rent, electricity etc.
For that reason we pay 5€ for a record that is worth 10€, 20€ for a record that is worth 40€ and so on. We have overheads to pay, government takes a 24% cut in VAT etc. We’re not ripping our customers off, we’re always very transparent about these things.
Most people don’t want to go through all the hassle of selling online and prefer the easy way of selling locally to a shop and get the stuff back in circulation and into new loving homes.
I hate it when people tell, that: ”You should never sell to a record shop, they rip you off!” I just fucking hate it.
Not a bad idea, i might try that as a first step. Thanks.
In my experience of trying to sell to records shops in the past, they have given me really low-ball offers and refused to negotiate. But then that’s UK record stores, which are notorious for employing total wankers. I’m sure Finland is a lot friendlier.
As others have suggested, you should probably divide the collection into “extremely rare and valuable” and “everything else”. Everything else is worth $0, or whatever someone will pay you. The extremely rare stuff will depend on a combination of demand and what exactly you mean by “DJ worn”
I have a similar problem with my remaining Eurorack. In theory, I have $2k worth of modules. In reality, no one is interested. I’ll continue to drop my asking price, but at some point it makes more sense to drop everything off at the local second hand shop rather than individually pack and ship modules for $25 each.
Also, when considering whether you are getting “ripped off” you should consider the value you received by owning and playing those records. When I ask that question of myself the answer is usually a combination of “I’ve already received more value from owning and using the thing than I paid for it” and “any amount of money I can get is a win.”
This!
A fun exercise: keep a clock running while you are taking an inventory of your stuff, writing up posts, packing, etc. Now assume 50% more than the local minimum wage and you will have a feel for what the same effort will cost your local record shop. Add 50% to 200% more time because the clerk at the record shop doesn’t have the entire history of your collection in her head and your figure is a little more realistic. If you make significantly more than minimum wage, then you should also consider the opportunity cost of doing retail grunt work instead of working more billable hours.
Time is money, and you can buy more free time for yourself by lowering your price dramatically or selling cheap to a professional like @Wolf-Rami.
There is a strong argument to be made for leaving home with a collectible and coming home with cash, in fact people who have never been “collectors” only understand this type of transaction to begin with.
Only those with passion for something (or determination in sales) will have put in the time and effort to know how to fetch top dollar, and be willing to deal with the hassle to get it.
This is one tactic you may find used by resellers in a saturated market. It is unfortunately part of the choice that weighs in on your ultimate course of action.
