Topic: What to do with CDs

[johnw]

I have a modest collection of cds (500-600) that have survived many moves but have been relocated to storage in plastic containers in the basement. I have most ripped to itunes and flac. Any ideas on what to do with them? Here's what I've come up with:

1) Bring them into the house in a cabinet or bookshelf of some type. The problem is that the furniture has to be aesthetically pleasing and toddler proof
2) Sell them somehow. The only place I know of that buys is amazon. But I'm not sure it is worth it to sell them individually for $1 given that you have to search for each cd title
3) Toss them in the dump. Not great for the environment. I'm sure somebody would like a few of these.
4) Donate them. To whom? The local library refused them (too many)

[nulldogmas]

5) Sell them in a lot on eBay or wherever.
6) Sell them piecemeal at a record fair or yard sale.
7) Put them up for trade on SwapaCD.com, which at least gets you new CDs that you don't know what to do with.
8 ) Leave them in the basement for when the EMP knocks out all your hard drives and cloud backups, and then you can re-rip them as soundtrack for your post-apocalyptic nightmare.

[ero3030]

deff have a killer yard sale!!!                  i have every ripped also. i can not stand having jewel cases all over the place.  funny this was,  as i was going threw totes of cd's to rip,  just about all of my wives cd's were just empty jewel cases!!!!!                 ed

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

Same boat here. I don't even own an actual CD player. I can only play CD's via a computer or my car, and since I have everything ripped to FLAC/MP3 and both also play MP3's and FLAC's the CD's just sit around.

I doubt that many of them are of any value. Doubtful it would be worth it to lug them to my local record shop to try to sell them, and I'm not willing to list every one on eBay and then go through the hassle of shipping them.

I think the two options I'm considering are:

1. Drop them off at the Salvation Army and hope they will take them.
2. Put an ad on Craigslist to have someone take them for free.

I'm leaning towards #2.

There are a handful that I plan on keeping. One's that I know are valuable and/or rare. I have those set aside.

I just have so many that I know I'll never listen to ever, and I know they aren't worth a penny.

[kubacheck]

look into Charity type stores.....  someone I know distantly (ie: on Facebook) was going to sell his 2500 strong CD collection to Amoeba records, and they were only gonna give him a $200 store credit, so he found some charity that took them and gave him a $500 tax deductible receipt for them.....

[stevetoney]

Re-purpose them and use for skeet practice.

Extract any Eagles CDs and send them to people you hate.

[kubacheck]

Re-purpose them and use for skeet practice.

Extract any Eagles CDs and send them to people you hate.

better yet, broadcast the Eagles CD's, and they'll sue you for the entire collection.....  problem solved!! :-)

[noahbickart]

Sell them in the Yard sale for $5 each. Donate the proceeds to the charity of your choice.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

I'm going through the old CD's I have sitting around and entering them into my Discogs.com profile, and many of them sell (or at least are priced) a lot higher than I would have thought.

My first plan was to make of list of what I had so I could replace them with downloaded FLAC's. I think for the price some of them are going for I might just list them for sale on Discogs and price them below every one else. I know I said I didn't want to deal with shipping them, but if I can sell a single CD for $8-10 it might be worth it. I would guess I'm not going to have a tidal wave of sales, so the occasional trip to the PO might be worth it. I can always use the $$$ to fund more music or upgrades to the playback system.

[Chilly Brioschi]

Keep them so that when the earth's magnetic poles invert you'll be the only one on your block with music.

Dibs on any and all polka CDs !       

[johnw]

Lots of great ideas. I managed to find a solution where I could bring them in the house and store them in some drawers. Did the same thing for some DVDs as well. Not really a long term solution, but it will give me a chance to catalog them and slowly get rid of them.

[H₂O]

Legally you need to keep them if you keep the flacs or mp3's

I greatly reduced the space by moving mine to CD sleeves and CD jewel case bags (similar to the plastic re-sealable bags that cd's are sold in in Japan)

Holds 1-2 CD's + booklet/insert:
http://www.amazon.com/100-Double-sided-Plastic-Sleeve-White/dp/B002RO8JE6

Hold above sleeve and CD back card:
http://www.amazon.com/Resealable-Sleeves-Standard-10-4mm-Jewel/dp/B002L71QJO

I then put all my sleeved discs in Ikea CD boxes - http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00224316/

Can hold about 50-60 CD's in each ikea box when packeged in the sleeves and bags

Works great for me - should allow you to move your collection on to a couple of book case shelves

[nulldogmas]

There's also always this:

[H₂O]

My local library was using old "uneeded" CD/DVD's for a kids craft one day when I was there.  They where having kids crotia around them to make coasters

They where all store bought CD/DVD's and the ones I looked at looked in very good playable condition - although only a few of the 10-15 I looked at where of artists or performers I knew of

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

There's also always this:

Ha!  My cousin's husband hung a bunch of CDs up in his garden to keep the deer away this past year...  something about the twinkling reflected light???  It seemed to have worked...

Terry

[nulldogmas]

I was actually hoping to find my photo of the Calder-esque mobile that a friend of mine made out of AOL install CDs circa 1999, but this was the closest I could get.

[jefflester]

Other art projects:

http://zedomax.com/blog/2011/08/07/what-you-could-do-with-65000-aol-cds/

[monkfish]

I was actually hoping to find my photo of the Calder-esque mobile that a friend of mine made out of AOL install CDs circa 1999, but this was the closest I could get.

Not sure how I stumbled across it but the other day on eBay I saw someone had individually listed numerous AOL install CDs from throughout the years. No I did not check Sold Listings to see if anyone ever has actually bought one.

[nulldogmas]

Not sure how I stumbled across it but the other day on eBay I saw someone had individually listed numerous AOL install CDs from throughout the years. No I did not check Sold Listings to see if anyone ever has actually bought one.

That's the best Dadaist performance art project ever.

[anodyne33]

For storage I bought a few of the cases we had at the record store I managed and went from this.



to this






Made me happy until I filled them up. But the WAF on the cases in the living room is low.

If I were getting rid of them I'd do what we did at the CD store and sign up for an Amazon seller account and get a postage meter. I know there are a few that are relatively hard to get that I'd be getting a few bucks for. You just have to keep up on it to maintain your seller rating and make sure that what goes out is in good shape.

Of course, it also helped that we had a POS system that matched up our inventory with Amazon's, but you could get a barcode scanner for $30 and do that at the house if you really wanted to be slick about it.

[deadheadcorey]

I have the same problem too. I am moving this weekend and I don't know what to do with my burnt cds and regular cds. was just thinking of tossing my burnt cds in the garbage, live shows ie phish, gd, moe. etc. etc.

[thunderbolt]

If you have a local college radio station, they'd probably love to get them.  Or the local library.  Or the school system (depending on content).

[earmonger]

You can dispose of any commercially released CDs with bar codes (not burned shows) at Ipodmeister. They pay for Fed Ex shipping and give back either gizmos or cash. They'll also burn mp3 copies of CDs if there's something you're not sure you want to part with. No idea what their business model is but hey...

http://ipodmeister.com/