Yard Sale/DVD pricing

Everything else
1

I have actually looked around the intarwebs and couldn’t really find a good answer, so please QT3, you’re my only hope!

We’re having a community yard sale this weekend, and my SO and I are going to sell off my paperback books and a bunch of DVDs, about 150 or so, actually.

If you were at a yard sale, how much would you buy them for? We were tentatively thinking $2 a piece or 3 for $5, but part of me also wonders if I should sell them for $5 a piece instead. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears.

2

I think you’re on the right track. If some of them are fairly new or recent releases, they might fetch more. I’d leave it at $2 and 3 for $5 and let people maybe talk you down if they’re interested in something in particular. People always like to haggle at garage sales, so if you start at $2 each and they walk away having paid $1.50 they’ll be happy and you’ll have cash.

3

You could also check and see what they’d earn in trade-in credit on Amazon. Then, you’d just dump 'em in a box, slap on the prepaid shipping label, and wait for the credit to be applied to your account.

4

I think $2 a pop is pretty fair. If there’s anything unusual in the collection, you can bump that up a little bit.

5

$2 and 3 for $5 is what I usually do for DVDs. And $1 for CDs. I often do $1 paperbacks and either $2 or $3 hardbacks for books.

6

This is what I did. It will also give you an idea about how little they are worth.

7

Thanks for the replies!

I do have a couple of boxed sets/tv seasons, maybe I’ll sell those at a $5 starting point.

And yeah, we will probably do the amazon tradein thing for the ones that are left over.

8

Looking at Amazon is worth a go if only because you never know if something is surprisingly worth more than the $2 or $3 you’re going to sell them for at the yard sale. I reduced a 500 DVD collection to around 50 DVDs two years ago through Amazon and I was surprised that some of it went for decent values. I’m sure I could have done better eBaying the lot, but I can’t put a dollar value on the convenience of just tossing it into one box and sending it off with a label they provide. With the credit I got I picked up a Kindle, a bunch of eBooks, built a library of books about the building of Walt Disney World and had enough left over that in '09 I didn’t pay for a single game.

(If you do go the Amazon route, here’s my number one tip. Fib. If you’re putting up Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 3 and you see that there’s two versions and the ‘slim case’ version is worth twice as much as the regular version, what do you know, turns out you have the slim case version! Awesome! Is the pan n scan version of Ocean’s Eleven worth more than the widescreen? You’re pretty sure yours is pan n scan, right?)

9

You could list them here, Athryn and see if people will want any of 'em as well. ;)

10

Thanks for the Amazon tip, I am going through the list (thank goodness that I used my phone to scan all the barcodes to make a database, this is making it a lot easier!) and most of them are only worth $.25-$.75 a piece, but there’s been a couple that have been a lot more, gonna set those aside and send them in. :D

11

Fixed that for you. ;)

12

My mom’s neighbors swear they get more for their garage sale items if they let people make an offer. It saves time and energy. They make it a point to talk to each and every person who comes to the sale, though. That congenial conversation makes it hard for the buyer to low bid the process. People start offering what they think is a fair price, which is often higher than what might have been asked.

It does help to have an idea of value, though.