Best Option To Liquidate CD Collection

My understanding is that if you buy a CD/DVD, you own that copy. If you copy that either as a disc or a hard drive you own that original copy. If you sell that original and retain the copy, you essentially have gained profit by retaining a copy then re-selling. The industry sees that one copy was paid for but two copies exist and they have been cheated out of the second copy.
As far as selling your originals, I agree with the comments made about retention. First off if you ever damage your hard drive you have copies to rebuild your library. Second if a better storage technology comes along(just wait) you have the originals to transfer from your best original. I hope to do this someday as well, and plant to package them up and store them so that they would be easy to move. In the balance what you will receive for your collection, especially in a bulk sale, that money will be a minor temporary gain at best.
Check with bagsunlimited.com and I am sure they have the right box to do the job.
Just another music lovers opinion.

I agree, keep them. Do create a catalog of them and post it on line. Let any buyers come to you. When they do, check eBay and Amazon for market rates. Never sell below $5 plus shipping and handling, its not worth the trouble. If you sell any, duplicate it on a CD-Rom to maintain the 'back up'.

Agree with Lindisfarne on the value of the CDs as back-up. Also question the legality, or at least the ethical aspect, of selling. I believe that if you sell your copies you don't really 'own' the burnt copies. I understand many people go to the library and check out copies to burn. I feel a little uncomfortable with that as I would selling my copies.

Ok some good comments but no one has answered my question .....have you sold your collection? I do not have the room to store them. All music is backed up on spare hard drives.
Are you saving your 8 tracks and cassettes too.

To answer your question, the amount you'll gain from selling your collection is directly proportional to the amount of work you put in selling it. If you want to sell in bulk you're not going to maximize your return. Why would anyone pay you top dollar if they have to turn around and do the work to sell them individually? Selling your cd collection is no different form selling any other category of collectible. It's a pain in the rump to list and sell each cd on Ebay or Amazon, but it's the only way you're going to get more than pennies on the dollar. I've known several individuals trying to sell their music collections and the results are similar. Classical is hard to sell, jazz a little less so, and rock/popular sells the easiest (unless it's Three Dog Night or Barry Manilow etc.) In the end, everyone I've known said it was a lot of work to try and get a decent return.