Rip and Goodbye, Follow Up
Over a year ago (good lord, where did the time go?) I wrote about how I was ditching almost my entire CD collection. I had grown tired of the physical space they consumed, and I rarely listened to any of them because of the instant accessibility of digital music.
So in October 2005, I set out with a goal. To rid myself of every CD, with the exception of around 75 -- the desert island discs -- that I absolutely could not live without.
14 months later, I have my collection of 75 essentials already sorted out. All other CDs, with the exception of about 200 laggards, are gone. Here's how I did it with ease.
DYMO Stamps
It would have been impossible without the ability to print postage from home. DYMO Stamps - a collaboration between the DYMO printer company and Endicia, a web-postage company - requires no monthly fee and eliminates the need to go to a post office or buy stamps. You buy the printer (which I picked up used on ebay), and the labels from Endicia. The software and hardware worked perfectly on OS X. The stamp labels are a little pricey (a few cents per stamp) but well worth it.
Mailing envelopes
Office Depot and the like will nickle and dime you to death on packing materials. I ordered in-bulk a couple thousand padded envelopes from a company like Uline. Saved mad money.
Amazon.com Pro Merchant Account
Yes, I probably could have saved some money by selling each CD on ebay, but who has the time for that? With Amazon all you have to do is enter the ISBN on the back of CD and a minute later it's listed. To save a little more money, I subscribed to Amazon's "Pro Merchant" option, which is a flat monthly fee of $39.99, but you avoid the per-listing fee Amazon normally imposes. The more CDs you sell, the better the deal.
Prune every few months
I got in the habit of going through my Amazon listings (they provide a great UI for this) every third month or so to see where my used prices matched up with retail prices, and other used CDs (my competition) that were added in the interim. If my prices weren't competitive, I'd drop them. Not all the way down to the cheapest, but a dollar or so higher so when the cheapest ones under me were sold, I would be at the bottom. This kept the flow of discs moving each week steady.
Mail filters
All purchase emails from Amazon share similar subjects, so I set up a rule/filter in Mail.app to sweep all of them to a specific folder. Then whenever I needed to fulfill orders, I knew exactly where to go.
All told, I would guesstimate approximately 3000 were sold this way in the past 14 months. Along the way I noticed some interesting patterns.
Brooklyn rules
Seriously, what's up Brooklyn? Whenever I had a CD that was kinda obscure, but really good, it always seemed to go to an apartment in Brooklyn. Good taste up there.
California loves world/international
Anything world, international, or sorta new-agey always seemed to land in California. Must be the sun.
Soundtracks
Most movie soundtracks have limited press runs. So depending on your luck you could have a total turd (I think I sold Gone in 60 seconds for a nickel), or a rare bird someone is willing to pay top dollar for. For example, I sold the out-of-print soundtrack to Heathers for $30.
Not remastered? Forgetaboutit
I had a number of CDs that were released before subsequent remastered versions appeared. They had different ISBN numbers, so there wasn't a mix-up on the consumer side, but getting someone to buy a used copy of an un-remastered version was often times a tall order. I was forced into selling a few for much lower than normal.
CD-5 / Singles aren't worth crap
Years ago I was convinced that cd-singles would be hot collectors' items for their b-sides and unreleased tracks -- for like soundtracks -- their shelf lives were very short. That was before the age of the internet, and every artist having a boxed set of some kind. So unless you have something truly rare, they're only valuable to rabid fans.
Was it worth the hassle? Absolutely. Highly recommended to anyone with time and a little patience.
