What should my heirs do to dispose of my vinyl and CDs?

A resonant post.  While I think my son will assume ownership of my hardware (while perhaps not being as passionate about it as I've been ;-), my main concern is the appropriate disposition of collector sets I've accumulated.  As a long-time Deadhead, most of what needs deliberate effort are box sets of Dead releases that are worth 3x - 5x what I paid for them (based on what I see on ebay these days).    I'm talking about a strong 5-digit amount of dough.  From this thread, I picked up the valuable advice to catalog the most resellable pieces to facilitate the process of monetizing them for my heirs.  Great advice.  We ain't getting any younger!

Some posts here discuss the timing of such disposals.  Fact is we don't know when we're going to go.  This is really elegant.  Science fiction has discussed the horror that arises in a system when we do know.

There must be Discogs merchants who would be interested in extensive LP and CD collections (regardless of the cynicism of some elitist LP owners!)

I'm wondering if there are affordable barcode scanners and software for the purpose of cataloging. 

For your relatives without experience with vinyl, eBay or Discogs will take too long and be too much of a hassle, especially going through each record one-by-one grading.

Depending on where you live, the easiest/quickest thing for your heirs to do with you LP and CD collection would be for them to call up an area record store or three and ask for an offer on the whole collection (maybe let your heirs know the rough value). Assuming you have a worthwhile # of collectible LPs any record store owner will travel far to make a house call to pick up a valuable collection.  Depending on the number of rare/collectible records, they'll probably only get 25-35 cents on the dollar, but will be quick and easy.

My solution is to divide the systems between my three children. Once they have the components, which will be split so that each child has a nice functioning systems they can either get excited and keep their system or they can sell it on their own and make a little bit of money. I will even out the value the best I can by identifying some of the extra components should go to the children with a lesser value complete system. I am lucky that my children will not bicker over a tiny bit of money difference, so I believe.

One of my children is totally into music so that is an easy decision who gets my main system. They also have the space for a larger system while the others will be very content with the smaller systems, all being nice system capable of producing a great sound. I am going to go over the entire process well ahead of the time they will be split up. Should be an interesting discussion.

Concerning the CDs I still own, my son in-law loves music and is an avid collector so he is the logical choice to hand this collection down to. Any discs he does not want can be sold off and the money split evenly. He buys and sells CDs and Vinyl regularly.