soliciting options for getting rid of DVDs and games

Deusfaux

I have a large collection of DVDs I want to be rid of, and a number of video games as well, and I'm trying to consider what all my options are for getting rid of these things and what makes the most sense.

1. ebay. - most value per item. Apart from the couple of higher value items that would unlikely find their value in any other venue, like a sealed black label God of War Chains of Olympus or WoW TBC, there is just way too much hassle here for selling and shipping individual games and dvds, especially at the amounts they're likely to fetch.

2. blockbuster trade ins - upside is that it's super easy, I get something decent for each title, and there's no real chance of scam. They would also take ANYTHING. Whilst not doing as bad as the American company, the Canadian one still seems to be sort of in trouble, and I don't really like the idea of being stuck holding any credit with them. Complicating factors are that I have to travel to a location in another city as a bylaw here prevents the local locations from accepting trade-ins, and that Blockbuster's prices on things suck and they don't price match, so paying marked up amounts back in their store kinda obliterates the value I got from trading in.

3. craigslist. - similar to ebay, except cutting out all the BS of fraud/scam/shipping hassles. Still annoying to have to arrange meetings / send emails back and forth on a per item basis, even if a block from home.


?????


I know that it's always gonna be easier to get rid of things in a larger "dump" of them, but I don't want the value of individual titles averaged to a common low point, and a huge % taken off for the buyer's benefit.

At the same time, there doesn't seem to be a way to sell each title for it's own value that isn't obnoxious as hell.

trying to find a middle ground or another option I haven't considered. Anyone else take trade ins and not suck?

MushroomStick

The best way is to pick out the rare stuff that might actually hold some value and sell that stuff individually. Then you sell the rest of the stuff in lots. A lot of people have a hard time accepting this, but fact of the matter is that the vast majority of DVDs and games simply do not hold their value well.

KalTorak

I think Amazon will take DVDs and games as trade-in (different from selling them on Marketplace like Half.com) - good for getting rid of chunks of stuff, but don't expect more than a buck or two for each unless they're relatively recent. Try other venues first, then dump everything else into Amazon, is what I usually do.

Pure Din

Does Canada let you write off the value of charity donations on your taxes? For old DVDs or games that don't have much value, it's often easier to just donate to Goodwill or whatever and take the tax write-off.

ShimSham

If you're a member at SomethingAwful then use their SAMart to sell, there are always people there selling big DVD collections (if not, then I guess this isn't an option since I think they require you to be a member for however long before using SAMart)

Quid

You could check for ebay drop off stores near you. I've never seen what their general rates are though.

Deusfaux

ebay drop off stores...?

re: Charity. Even if I got $1 per DVD and have several hundred of them, that's $(several hundred) I could do something productive with. As it stands, several of them are probably worth a good deal more.

ShimSham

Deusfaux wrote:

ebay drop off stores...?

You drop off stuff there. They sell it for you. They take a percentage of what it sells for.

Either that or they might buy the items from you outright.

Pure Din

Deusfaux wrote:

re: Charity. Even if I got $1 per DVD and have several hundred of them, that's $(several hundred) I could do something productive with. As it stands, several of them are probably worth a good deal more.

But if you can subtract several hundred dollars from the amount you would normally pay on your taxes, that's also money going into your pocket.

The guide that charities such as Goodwill and Salvation Army use to value donations says DVDs and CDs are worth between $2 and $5 depending on the condition of the item. Let's say the tax credit on your donation is between 20%-40%, then you end up with the same amount of money as you would have directly selling for $1 each.

Obviously this strategy won't work as well for high-value items, because the charity will only value on the condition of the item; for example it's not going to distinguish between Madden 2004 vs Ico. But for the lower quality stuff, it's an easy way to unload it without having to find a buyer yourself.

emp123

You could trade them on Goozex, but if youre looking for cash Goozex is not the answer, but it will allow you to pick up games/dvds/blurays that you do want.

EggyToast

Selling any large quantity of items is a direct question of how much effort you want to spend versus how much money you want to make.

Consider it more like this. You may make more money on 5 DVDs out of a hundred. You have three options -- sell them all for much less than they're worth (this also includes the "give away" option), sell the entire set as a lot (using the well-known titles as an enticement), or breaking it up and doing research.

For 1, you just want to be rid of them. For 2, you save yourself a lot of time by simply having them all gone, and even though you could make more, you figure you're giving the person a discount by taking all the crappy titles together and all at once. For 3, you have to individually sell the fancy titles on eBay and figure out what to do with the remaining titles.

It's a tradeoff, and it really comes down to not so much where you're going to get rid of the DVDs and games, but instead how much time you want to spend on it. I sold about $2000 worth of vinyl a bit over a year ago, and some people contacted me and offered to buy a bunch of things at once. For those guys, they got a discount, so rather than selling 20 records for $400 individually, I sold them for $300 all at once. I saved myself shipping, fees, and the hassle of dealing with all those people. It was worth it to me to make less, and they often took a couple very rare or obscure records that seemed interesting but they'd never otherwise heard of (aka titles that would've languished in my place for much longer).

I knew they were worth money, so to me, that knowledge made spending the time worthwhile. So I sat down at my computer and went through and checked prices on everything one afternoon, then took pictures and posted. I spent some time doing the research and because of that I made more money.

If you don't want to spend a couple weekends, and a couple minutes during the week to deal with shipping and such, dealing with getting rid of your DVDs and video games, then don't focus so much on how some titles may be worth more. If you get rid of the key titles, you could simply end up stuck with a giant lot of DVDs that you can't get rid of, forcing you into cheaper options so ultimately it doesn't matter if you got $100 for all of your things in one lump sum or if you got $20 for one, $15 for another, $10 for another, and then $55 for the rest that's truly junk.

TankJitsu

I have used Amazon Trade-In before for video games with good results. I traded in about 6 old-ish PS3 games and got about $65 for them, which is credited to your Amazon account. I'm always buying stuff from Amazon, and they have everything, so you won't have credit with a dying company. Amazon pays for the shipping as well, so it's all profit for you. They will pay more for newer titles as well, and you can search for your game and get the exact trade in price.

The Crowing One

Lifehacker did a quick little side-by-side on a few places to sell stuff. Their goal was to maximize profit and minimize hassle/work. All said, it was a decent little guide. The consensus seemed to be that Amazon was best for smaller stuff and craigslist/eBay for larger ticket items.

In all, Goozex/Amazon is probably least least amount of hassle. Amazon if particular because they handle the whole process at the cost of a steeper cut.

Chanus

There's a used book store near me that also takes CDs and DVDs... was a life saver.

I think I ended up getting like $70 for about 200 CDs (what they didn't pay me for I just donated), which I know isn't a ton of money, but I was just happy to be rid of the clutter.

It's a decent option if you aren't trying to make money.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

Ebay is your best option if you want to maximize the amount of money and time isn't (too much) of a factor. Particularly for the high-value items. I've never used amazon trade in before, but that might be a good option (especially if there's no B&M game/video store that will give you a decent value on trade ins.)

I wouldn't go to blockbuster personally; they don't give you much in terms of credit (and it might be less now given the condition of their business.) If you just want to dump the stuff take it to the salvation army or similar and write it off later.

ed: also, I'd post an add on craigslist if you're comfortable meeting buyers in person that way. It takes about ten seconds to list the ad and you can always just ignore anybody who seems obnoxious.