Best Place/Way To Sell My CD Collection?

Theo: The keeping or discarding of prerecorded music after ripping it to a server is really a moral/legal issue.
In reality as of now, the thought police cannot arrest you for doing it.
The issue may arise in the future were they COULD arrest you. Then you may be in the same boat as the few illegal downloaders who discover the legal costs will bankrupt them.

Then morally (to some posters) the point is you legally own the album. If you sell the actual item, you no longer legally own it. And are no better than any thief.
So really it is a personal dilemma.

I would not rip then sell for one more reason. No matter how many ways you have your hard drive protected, it IS eventually going to fail, or be unable to transfer the data. Eventually you will wish you kept those albums...
This is my own paranoia. Plenty of horror stories vs folks claiming no problem. Since i am not a tech guru, I would keep the albums.

And I am paranoid, thinking just MY luck I would be the first person the RIAA decides to drag into court for having 200,000 songs i cannot PROVE* i own on MY hardrive..
LOL (this is where still owning the real albums is the proof. NOT still having them means you are just S.O.L.

I would suggest assigning a value to them, and donating them to Goodwill, who will give you a receipt. They can then be claimed as a charitable donation. Trying to sell them individually , or as a lot will be more hassle, take a lot of time, and is unlikely to net you enough to be worth the effort.
By the way, Goodwill is a great source for records and CDs.
Good Luck.

Elizabeth, I keep an extra back up copy hard drive just in case the original hard drive fails. I also still have my 5000+ Cd's.

Hi Richard.

A compromise way of selling them, after pulling any "audiophile gems," might be in lots of 10 or so, organized by lots of artist, genre, etc. I've bought this way, and I'm guessing the yield might go as high as 5-6$ a disc, for the interesting stuff.

The donation/tax deduction route might be attractive; I'm guessing you could claim, on average, more than you could sell for, and "fair value" times your effective rate might make an attractive proposition. You'd want to know the cutoff after which a donation of goods must be be professionally assessed; I'm guessing 5k, but don't quote me.

On the topic of ripping and reselling, I'm uncomfortable. Not because of loss (I have a duplicate hard drive "off site" at work), but because I feel a little ethically uncomfortable. Not sure what the right thing to say is.

I do have the following rule of thumb: I'm reluctant to let people rip my discs if I suspect that the artist makes less than I do. This counsels against sharing for many of the sort of artists I (and you) like; a fact that, unfortunately, says more about the music biz than my earning power. Doesn't much help with the rip and resell question, though.

I like Channel Orange, btw, though it won't make it into heavy rotation.

Cheers,

John

I have sold over 10k cd's on ebay . thay are worth more than what you are being told. Large lots (100 or more) of classic rock on ebay sell for between $1 -$1.50 . Individually you should get between 2.5 and up to 6 . Depending on titles . pop music is the bad sellers . Lots of hours listing ans trips to the post office thouh . Low shipping and 1 cent starts is the best method for selling there.