I sold most of mine about 13 years ago on eBay. I sold individually, by auction, listing a couple of dozen at a time. I offered bulk postage saving because postage was significant but not directly proportional to number of disks. I estimated values based on others on eBay, setting starting prices accordingly, and a few dozen went for £5-£10, maybe a dozen or two so £10-£20, and a handful more, one for over £100. Ones with apparently negligible value I started at something like 20p, which with indicated postage cost was enough to cover the sum of actual postage cost, eBay listing and selling fees, and Paypal fee. I preferred that they went to someone who wanted them rather than go to the local incinerator. But it was actually quite time consuming, and took about a year to get through my collection of about 450.
Desirable rarities are worth identifying and trying to sell for a decent price, or if giving to a charity shop making sure they are aware, though wither that makes a difference I have no idea.
It is important to know what you have in your collection. Discogs is very helpful in this regard and it does not take too long to catalogue (I have about 2000 remaining albums and these were done in quite short order in spare hours) and the more rare and often surprising items do show up. Rarity does not go hand in hand with musical quality, one of my most valuable LP’s was released and considered so bad it was withdrawn in a couple of days. It lists at £200-300 in VG condition. By chance I had bought a copy, and it is truly awful and so was played twice, once to listen, second time to confirm my disbeleif!
Two things though, don’t kid yourself on the condition VG+ means as new. Second don’t leave all the dross for some poor vinyl dealer! If you just leave them Phil Collins and Fleetwood Mac they are gong to struggke to shift them. Better to list it all and agree a price taking account of the good ones.
One off sales via auction sites are a nightmare best avoided!
The days of making any worthwhile return on used records (excepting very rare and in demand stuff arguably) are long gone.
As much as I love vinyl records, its surviving at the moment by a minority of specialist enthusiasts who care and differently by cynical marketing from major companies as a fashion trend. Inevitably in my view the bubble will burst soon and sellers will struggle to give away vinyl records, good news for those of us who still value them to listen too but not as an investment.
I started cataloguing my collection in the early COVID days, and I’m still at it (I have ~3,000 records). I’m on the second pass, as I decided I wanted to add as much information as possible, so, as well as filling in the Condition fields, I added my own custom fields for where I got them (and, if from e.g. eBay or Discogs, the name of the vendor), when I got them, price, and so on. I give it 15 or 20 minutes a day, and it’s fun, in its own way. I have a few more months to go, then I’ll make a third pass, adding the 200 or so records I have that aren’t yet in Discogs’ database.
