I am moving into a new apartment in about a month, and I’ve already started the process of getting rid of things that I would rather not move.
I have an unwritten rule that if I haven’t used something in the last year, I should get rid of it. One of the first things I noticed that fell into this category was my old collection of DVDs. I have some great movies, but now that I have a Blu-Ray player (my PS3), I couldn’t bear to watch anything off a regular DVD.
Once a man goes HD, he never goes back. Although apparently women don’t have the same problem. Usually my girlfriend with 20/20 vision can’t tell the difference between standard and high definition. I don’t even have good eyesight, but I cringe whenever I see standard definition anymore.
Movie Segue – Life is Beautiful
The only movie I even had to think twice about selling was Life Is Beautiful
. The first time I saw this movie was in a philosophy class during my freshman year of college. I couldn’t look like a wuss so I forced myself not to cry in front of the rest of my classmates. I later rented the movie to watch with my girlfriend and cried my freaking eyes out.
And I’ll have you know that I cry, on average, less than once a year. It’s just not a physical response my body deems necessary often. This movie is the exception. Definitely one of the top five movies I have ever seen.
How to Sell Old Movies and Games
There are a lot of ways to sell your old stuff. Determining how you want to do it is usually a matter of convenience and time versus the type and amount of money you get for your items. I’ll go over two traditional ways to sell your games, and a new favorite for me.
Trade in at a Local Store
You can trade your movies to a local video, game, or book store, usually for store credit. The nice thing about this is you can trade in your items and have store credit in hand immediately. The problem is, you’re not going to get even close to fair value for your item and you get store credit that is only good for more of the same stuff you just got rid of.
I have traded in video games at places like Gamestop in the past, and have always felt like I was getting completely ripped off. I love convenience, but I’m way too cheap not to get at least a decent value for my trade in. You may remember my disdain for the lack of a robust video game trading website.
Sell on eBay, Amazon, or Half
If you want to get as much money as possible for your stuff, you can try to auction it on eBay or sell it on Half.com or Amazon. These are great options because you pay a small fee but can easily double what you might have gotten in a local trade in. You also get your payment in cash, which is obviously much better than any kind of store credit.
The problem with this method is that it may take you a very long time to sell your items. If you have a lot to sell, you’ll constantly be making trips to the post office to ship everything. You have to monitor your email like a hawk and make sure to ship things quickly. To me it’s not worth the hassle, even though it’s the best way to maximize revenue.
If only there was a way to get the convenience of a trade in, but get more money and something better than video store credit…
Trade in on Amazon
This is what $93 looks like to Amazon
Two weeks ago, I didn’t even know this was an option. The Trade-In section of Amazon offers a place where you can trade in your old movies, video games, books and electronics. You just search for your product from that link and they will tell you how much you can get for the trade in. You can do up to $750 of trading in at a time. Then you just print a UPS shipping label and you send everything to Amazon with no cost to you.
They will receive your package, make sure everything is what you said it would be, and then give you a credit to your Amazon account. If you send them the wrong DVD or something that doesn’t work, they just send it back to you.
I can’t say for sure if Amazon pays more for the trade in than a local store, but I would always take Amazon credit over a local store credit. You can pretty much buy anything at Amazon, making that credit actually useful.
My Stuff Was Worth $93
I basically had a bunch of crap that I might have thrown out, but instead I’m sending it to Amazon for $93. What a deal! I think I’m going to use that money to buy a new computer chair. I’m typing this right now in a $15 Wal-Mart chair and my butt feels like I’ve been riding a Huffy for the last 10 hours. Not pleasant.
Update: Thanks to a great reader comment (Thanks Chris!) I was just made aware that there is a place to sell old CDs. I didn’t think there was a market for used CDs, but apparently there is. Check out abundatrade if you have CDs to unload.
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Thanks for the info on the Amazon trade-in! I’m a “garage sale saver” which usually means I have bags of stuff in storage for years that is pretty useless to me. I can’t get motivated to devote my time to Ebay selling even though I’ve made decent money with it in the past. This Amazon thing sounds like a good alternative.
Also appreciated the Huffy seat reference…made me giggle 😉
You sound like you’re in the same boat as me. I definitely say you should trade it in. It was so easy to drop those boxes off at the UPS store today.
I love amazon for text books! I usually get pretty good money for those. And you’re right…I don’t speak for all women, but I’d say most women could care less about blue-ray, HD, blah blah blah. I seriously can’t see the difference.
It amazes me. I literally get angry when I have to watch something in standard definition.
What about CDs? I have SO many old CDs that I would like to get rid of!
Lauren, try abundatrade.com. I’ve used them twice now and gotten a decent amount of money back for old CDs and DVDs.
Thanks for the comment Chris. I updated to post to include that information! Great find!
You can always donate to a local library or charity; however, if you can’t itemize deductions, you won’t realize any financial gain. But you can set your own valuation on the items.
Then again, there are books, CDs, etc., that I haven’t touched for 10-20 years that I still would never get rid of.
Ah sentimental value. Luckily I pretty much don’t have sentimental value towards anything. Makes for a non-cluttered apartment.
Not sentimental at all. Just because I haven’t turned in some time to a novel or symphony I’ve greatly enjoyed 10 years ago doesn’t mean I would never turn to it again. And why buy a new copy rather than use the perfectly good one I have. I assure you though that I periodically cull what’s on my shelves and get rid of things I truly expect I’ll never want to return to again.
Sorry Larry, that was my fault for assuming. If you are going to watch or use that stuff again, then I say it’s a good idea to keep it. And as far as books are concerned, I’ve kept all of mine. I just think they look nice and would like the opportunity to go back and read them. Plus, if I sold them, then I wouldn’t have anything to do with my bookshelf.
Interesting option. I may have to try this to get rid of some of my old xbox games and DVDs that we never watch. I’m all about the streaming nowadays – no more physical media!
Life is Beautiful is one of my top 10 all time favorite movies too – no shame in crying on that one. I did too. Although I’ll never admit to it if pressed. 😉
Go for it. I’m already excited about moving because I know that’s one less thing to pack. It’s liberating.
$93 is pretty good for things that you were just going to throw out. So you’re moving to the 2 bedroom? 🙂
It’ll be much nicer.
I can’t wait for the two bedroom. It will be annoying to move, but once it’s over I’ll be much happier.
That’s a really cool program from Amazon, really. From their perspective, this automated trading thing will probably bring in a lot of new business, and grow their margins by cutting out the middlemen. Jeff Bezos is a genius, I swear.
I’m surprised they didn’t come up with it earlier. It’s just one more reason I’m a loyal Amazon customer.
I should take advantage of that Amazon program. I have old dvds that I haven’t pulled out in years because I can stream them online. What a waste of space!
Exactly how I felt. Clear the space and get some money. It feels like Amazon is doing you a favor and paying you for the honor.
Or you can buy a nice new book on tape at amazon for $60 and then they offer to buy it back for $2.50. Thanks amazon, f**k off.
If it’s selling for that much money new, it’s typically worth the time and effort for me to resell that on eBay or Half. It’s just the non-valuable old stuff that I like to trade in.
I recently traded in a bunch of old video games and accessories on Amazon. The values they offer are actually VERY good for video games, but they vary a lot from day to day. Before I traded anything, I looked on eBay / Craigslist for each item to see what I could expect. Out of probably 25 games, two consoles, a bunch of accessories, and 30+ blurays, the only things I decided to eBay were three different Mario games on the Wii. For the rest of them, the Amazon trade value either met or even exceeded what one could get on eBay after the fees. Plus it was a lot less hassle, just box them up and ship with the free label they provide.