Purging CDs
Thursday December 11, 2003 – 12:54 amLast night John and I combed through our wall of CDs and pulled out a great big box-full that we can get rid of without too much heartbreak. :-) Of course all music is great music, and we enjoyed all those CDs while we had ‘em. I’d keep ‘em all if I had a gigantic house, but we’re in an ordinary apartment, drowning in piles of CDs! Gotta make some decisions, can’t keep everything just because it’s good.
As a couple, John and I have a huge CD problem, but we have different styles of collecting. He buys more, and numerically speaking probably has twice as many as I do. I don’t buy as much, but I get a lot of CDs for free or through trading with other bands. Many of those only have short-term listening value… you might want to hear the band’s CD a couple of times during the weeks after you’ve met/played with them, but you don’t feel the need to keep ‘em just for sentimental value or whatever. (I learned from watching Clean Sweep that memories are best kept inside the head!)
Purging-wise, John has been very good through the years about culling his CD collection, whereas I’ve let everything pile up to the point that I have no idea what I’ve got or how to find anything. So the big box of purgeables is really mostly my stuff, though John did try to get into the spirit and chucked as many as he could. Me, I still have a couple of shelves full of CDs I need to file, but at least I know it’s mostly keep-worthy stuff. But man, if we were really on Clean Sweep you know they’d make us get rid of five or six boxes instead of only one!!
Next on my hit list: PENS and other writing instruments. They’re breeding in little clusters all over the house. I’m going to gather them up and only allow a maximum of 500 or so.







December 11th, 2003 at 2:23 am
Man, you could have probably sold a lot of them on ebay….
M
December 11th, 2003 at 2:28 am
We’re going to go through the box to separate sell vs. toss vs. giveaway for certain promos that I wouldn’t feel comfortable selling. John will probably take the sellables to Reckless, or wherever it is that he goes when he goes. This stuff isn’t really eBay-worthy, trust me!
December 11th, 2003 at 3:34 am
hmmm… I purged cds a long time ago… so I don’t blame you… but I was thinking one couples trash could be some other persons treasure…
M
December 11th, 2003 at 4:23 am
I used to got through my CDs pre-ebay pre-me ever using the internet, and I’d give them to the local library. Perhaps that’s an alternative?
December 15th, 2003 at 7:49 pm
I did the same thing a year ago, only I stacked them by my computer, and entered the UPC codes into half.com’s Sell Your Stuff window to see what my CD might go for… From there I priced my CD’s from $1.99 - $13.99 (I was surprised to see a Kenny Rogers CD that was out of print listed at $14.00, lowest price, used. I set my price at $13.99 and it sold within 2 days.) You don’t know what your CDs are worth until you check on half.com to see what they are already selling for.
From there, they go into a box, and I dig them out as they sell. I have made over $450 in the past year on CDs.
December 17th, 2003 at 7:07 pm
Edith, have you considered donating some of the cds to the Girls Rock Institute? We ran a little article on Glorious Noise about how they’re trying to build up their library, and they’re looking for donations:
http://www.gloriousnoise.com/arch/001048_girls_rock.php
It’s tax deductible too. Not to be too much of a scammer, but you can probably claim more than you’d get if you sold them used…
December 17th, 2003 at 7:27 pm
Thanks for the idea, that’ll be great the next time I have CDs and don’t need the money! ;-)