Pruning your physical music collection (CD, vinyl, etc.)... thoughts?

I've lived in 4 Canadian provinces and London, England in the past 6 years. That pretty much ended the idea of a physical music collection. It was a crash course in digital music. I've since sold about half my CD collection... though I still have a tendency to pick up vinyl at thrift shops etc.

It was a crash course in digital music.

ha... actually I've been pretty lucky in that regard.

How often do you prune your record collection?
Once a year. Spring Cleaning. Just did a batch. You get so little money for it, but the real estate is worth something.

At what point do you decide it's time to sell stuff?
When I start to run out of room, get embarrassed by the clunkers, and want some "free" cash.

How on earth do you choose *what* to sell?? (this is a big one...)
Duplicates are the first to go, though deciding which format to get rid of depends on pressings, condition, bonus tracks, etc. Next to take the hit are things that I never listen to, especially things bought on a whim--though exploratory buying happens a lot less now than in pre-Web days when you often had to buy something to check it out. And lame promos take a hit, too.

Are you nostalgic about what to keep/sell (e.g., will you sell music from your earlier years that meant something to you, or that you played consistently, at one point in your life, but that you no longer listen to)?
Sometimes. A corollary is that my standards for holding onto things from places I've lived, or by bands I know personally, are gentler.

Where do you sell your stuff (local record stores, Amazon, eBay, or somewhere else), and why?
Regular stuff at stores (I'm in NYC: good cds to Other Music, bad cds anywhere, vinyl to Academy), the occasional rare thing on Ebay. Though by now the rare stuff I've got is the rare stuff I want.

How often do you have regrets once you let go of the CDs/records you have sold?
I usually let the pile of discards sit a bit before hauling it to the stores, so there's time to retrieve things. I have more regrets about things I put in my college station's collection that I didn't appreciate at the time. Crash Course in Science 12", and so on.

Have you ever sold something, then bought it back immediately?
No. Though I did once buy a used copy of a compilation I released. Didn't have any left of my own, and it looked so forlorn in the bin...

As for everyone else here, the hard drive has made these decisions a bunch easier. Held on to so much over the years for archival purposes--the ability to refer to an obscure 1992 release while writing a review in 2005. But the mediocre stuff gets digitized, and the collection proper is better, and more manageable, for it.

Hard to get rid of run-of-the-mill indie cds at this point. Did OK with the punk, classic rock, jazz, and post-punk cds. Indie vinyl, too. But promo generic indie cds (Voxtrot, Sons and Daughters, Foals, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Rogue Wave, etc), not a dime for.

And this is a bit off-topic, but I can't get a line on this anywhere...anyone have a feel for the value of the Guided by Voices vinyl box set on Scat? You'd think there'd be one up on ebay, but no. Seems like those GBV-collector folk are a bit nuts, but I don't know how nuts. And they shouldn't get off too easy....

Amazon:

Box by Guided by Voices (Vinyl - 1995) - Box set
2 new from $174.99
1 used from $398.00

This item has been discontinued by the manufacturer.
4.6 out of 5 stars (9)

http://www.popsike.com/php/quicksearch.php?pagenum=3&searchtext=guided+by+voices+box+-sand&incldescr=¤cy=&sortord=&thumbs=

Yeah, thanks. Did see that...I guess it's the best guideline out there. though by definition an Amazon listing hasn't sold, so an ebay final number will always mean more. Maybe just throw it out there with a high reserve and see if any GBV crazies start a frenzy.

Michael, I bought my copy of the GBV box for $50.

Oh, the Popsike is very helpful. thanks.

re. CDs, i've pretty much sold everything that i don't really want, except for some things that are worth big money or might be worth big money (in my humble estimations). so it's a matter of occasionally finding a few things here and there i don't listen to at least a few times a year, or don't hold some personal value aside from this....

right now i tend to find a lot of stuff (CDs and vinyl) cheap that i can resell at a profit. surprisingly easy to do. i hold on to it until it sells. and the money i earn permits me to buy more stuff. i tend not to buy stuff that i wouldn't want to keep or hear--that just seems too weird to me. but if it's like, some reissue of african music that's worth $$, i'll buy it, keep it for a while, if it doesn't knock my socks off, i'll rip it to MP3 and sell it at a profit. i probably make $300–$900 a month on this stuff (in a really good month i can make $1,500).

all that said, my record collection (modest by ILX standards, maybe 600-700 LPs) needs pruning. this summer i'll probably pull out 100-200 LPs, put a few of 'em on ebay, sell the rest to reckless for a wad of cash and a few things i'd been coveting.

a lot of the "excess" vinyl is from lots i've bought. like, 20 LPs of caribbean folk music for $40. some i honestly will never listen to which is regrettable but, you know, life is short. but i'll pick out maybe four i really like and eventually sell the rest. maybe not necessarily at a profit but i won't lose too much money.

this all started like five years ago when i accidentally discovered a frank sinatra CD i had was worth like $200. then i got curious and realized i was sitting on a fair amount of stuff that was worth money. so i sold that, used some of the profit to buy stuff i wanted and some of it to buy stuff that i could sell at yet more profit. my record collecting is pretty much self-sustaining at this point.

I've prolly sold as much as I own -3000+ LPs- over 30 years, usually through straightforward poverty. Some big regrets now: TG 2nd annual report, Alien Soundtracks, Deceit spring to mind, but there's many more. I sell stuff I think I'll get money for, which means what remains is often what no one would buy, so the bottom few hundred of he collection are either unsellable because they're shit or for condition issues. I've gotten good recently at dumping stuff in charity shops, although it spoils the digging experience for me in that shop for a while.

I've never sold a CD because, a) I don't buy very many anyway -300-400? - and b) I can't really believe they're worth anything. If someone was to offer me a euro a throw for all of them I'd take it....

I've yet to purge any of my collection, even the embarrassing crap I bought when I was 15. More laziness on my part than anything.

Giving it all away wasn't as painful as I thought.

I am a robot tho.

i sold all my cds for rent/food $ several years ago. then kinda kept swapping things out when i was working for a music store (where it's so tempting to just pick up anything, given employee discount and 8 hours at a time looking at records/cds). never could be bothered to sift through my records because the stuff i want to get rid of ain't worth putting up on ebay. and i really don't want to haul this crap around and have a store reject 1/2 of em or whatever. i'll probably get around to it when i move next.

Once while moving I left a box filled with Prince bootlegs and 12"s in the old apartment...huge bummer