What to do with a large collection

@rvpiano

I am in the same situation, being 71 and not having cared for my most valuable material posession very well in my youth (my body). My great hope is that one of my kids or son-in-laws or any realtive will want them, as well as my system. I have listed most of my collection in DISCOGS, as has been mentioned.It’s a lot of fun and you can see what other members are selling the same release for. You can also see the high, low, and median prices that the release sold for in the past as well as when it last sold.

I was surprised how much some pople paid for some of my pieces, so if there is any chance you have some thing rare or valuable, check it out. You can also offer it for sale. I am not planning on selling much of my collection that way. Too time consuming but I am not going to toss out my Linda Ronstadt Live in Hollywood 2 LP set from Rino. It has sold for $99 and someome is currently asking for $199. Of course it also sold for $21 at some point. You will need to enter the bar code, catalog number, or matrix/runout code because it may make a big difference.

If I can’t find someone I know who will enjoy my stuff I would donate my collection to a Habitat For Humanity re-sell store. I know they are a true charity. Goodwill, not so sure they are 100% not for profit.

My system will be sold if necessary. Lots of ways to do that.

@kmcong I have 355 CDs and am fortunate to not have seen any rot....yet

The Smithsonian???

Back in the early 80's I traded all ~800 of my vinyl albums for about 20 CD's at a local shop.  Over the years, my CD collection reached about 1200.  Then I got back into vinyl again.  To me the sound was preferable to CD's, so I took about 1000 of those CD's to the local Goodwill and started collecting vinyl.  I have spent the last 8 - 10 years not only buying back all those albums I got rid of in the 80's, but another 700 or so on top of that.  Anymore, I'll only play a CD when I want to take a nap....

RIP them all to a music server and give the the CD's away.  Have a yard sale.  Take them to Goodwill. Sell the greats on ebay or reverb.  Little by little they will be gone.

I’ve gone around and around with this issue for some years now. I have approx. 1500 CDs and at least that many LPs. Over 1/2 (maybe 60%) of all of them are classical.

I’ve read a lot, talked to people in the business, schemed and planned how to convey all the LPs (stored in 9-10 heavy cardboard boxes) to this or that store that may/may not actually try to sell them. The paradigm seems to be A. drive 100s of lbs of LPs and/or CDs to the place; they go through it all, decide to sell <10%; then go pick up all the leftovers.

None of it works for me. I reluctantly concluded I’ll end up throwing them all out. Even that will either be expensive (pay someone to haul it all away) or effortful to the point of self-harm (after many shoulder surgeries, very hard to manage the boxes holding LPs).

I wish it weren’t this way, but it is & there’s no sense denying it.

PS: I no longer delude myself that there’s any money in all these recordings. I now look at it dead weight to be dealt with.