Selling My Books and CDs

purplebiro

Hi All,

I'm thinking about selling my books (about 2-300 mostly paperbacks, fiction) and CDs (about 150-200, nothing special mostly indie and electronica) and wondered if you had any feedback on the relative merits of Amazon, Ebay and private dealers in terms of money I'm likely to get, time it will take and hassle it will involve.

Thanks in advance.

P.s. I don't have any great expectations on how much I will make just want to put it in the holiday pot and declutter my life a little.

TurkishDelight

Amazon is free to list and gives you a breakdown of the fees you would pay if it sells before you submit the listing.
It also seems to be a less feedback drive culture, so new sellers and old are on a more even playing field.
However the fees can often be higher in total than ebay, and the item may sit there for ever or just not be economical to sell.

Ebay listing is free at a start price of 99p and under but this will probably not cover your costs as you can't specify your own postage, so you will have to pay to put each one on. The fees can be confusing as you have to offer paypal which has it's own set of fees.
However ebay is a fixed time listing so you can plan trips to the post office etc. It also probably reaches more potential buyers.

Dealers I don't really know anything about

Ames

You could try offering them as job lots on Gumtree or your local free ads? Free to list and you can set a price. Car booters might be interested, or just people who love books or cds who want to pick out what they want and then resell the rest.

danmanchester

There's a special offer on ebay just now in the media categories of free listings in auction format up to £4.99.

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/promos/0IF_091209/index.html

purplebiro

Thanks all, that's a real help. Need to sit down this weekend and crunch some numbers me thinks. The issue of time is a big one - on Amazon I'll be pricing to sell and that means researching the competition for 200+ titles....YIKES!

TurkishDelight

purplebiro wrote: »

Thanks all, that's a real help. Need to sit down this weekend and crunch some numbers me thinks. The issue of time is a big one - on Amazon I'll be pricing to sell and that means researching the competition for 200+ titles....YIKES!

Price match- otherwise the other sellers see that you have beaten them and they'll just match you anyway. Amazon rotates the listings so you'll get a turn lol.

dawyldthing

I've not done it myself yet, but you could try these:

http://www.musicmagpie.co.uk/?source=webgains&siteid=1300

especially with the volume of Cd's you have for sale, as i think they can pay 60p a cd, and to make that kind of money with ebay you would have to sell the cd at something like 2.00 a cd to make the same money at least, as it costs around 61p for posting, 20p for ebay charges or there abouts, 20p once its sold, 35p for paypal and then your packaging charges. But using something like these would save you time and money.

Hope it helps

sham63

If you are going to list the CDs on Ebay spend some time looking at 'completed' listings to see if it's worth bothering to list. You will probably find that certain CDs just never sell even at 99p - if you're lucky you might find that you have one or two that are quite sought after.

purplebiro

What about car boots? Is pricing each of the CDs at £2 and then being prepared to haggle a good plan. Same for the books?

cyberbob

You may be able to get help about car boots HERE

Ames

At the car boots I go to books sell for between 25p and 50p. CD's are a bit more, between £1 and £2.