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Selling records on ebay, still worth it?

finelikewinefinelikewine "ONCE UPON A TIME, I HAD A VINYL." http://www.discogs.com/user/permabulker 1,416 Posts
edited May 2012 in Strut Central
I haven't bought or sold a record on ebay since a long time. Nowadays I buy and sell mostly on discogs or in the real world, so I'm quite clueless whether it is still worth bothering. I just checked ebay and I'm astonished that most of the records are buy it know "auctions".

I'm sitting on a big fat record collection and money is tight, so I'm forced to sell a lot of records. The collection consists mostly of brazilian and krautrock/psych records, ranging from ultra rarities to common stuff and a lot between.
As I don't know how to prize most of them, discogs, buy it know auctions and classified section on this board are not an option.

Now I'm wondering if ebay is still the right place to find the right customers. Have they nowadys moved on to another place or platform?

Do ebay auction results still represent the market value of a record?

I will sell the records from Germany and I always used to sell them on ebay usa, as I thought the most record collectors check ebay us more than ebay uk or ebay Germany. If this is still true, is it still possible then for non us citizens to sell on ebay us?

Would you recommend to sell a certain genre of music on a specific national ebay site (for example le boogie on ebay france)?
If yes, what genres would you sell on which national ebay site?

Thanks in advance!

  Comments

  • tripledoubletripledouble 7,636 Posts
    in my novice opinion, it sounds like you are overthinking a little. ebay is still well used and buy it now is still only just a segment of that. a big boogie or krautrock or whatever title will be found and bid on at ebayusa as it probably would on the other ebays. interersting, hard to find joints will almost alway do well regardless. now the middle of the road and common stuff....you should check out manybolone's recent thread regarding hiphop. do you want to sell a thousand 6 dollar records on ebay? thats a shitload of emailing, packaging, shipping etc. may not be worth the time and effort.

    id say get top dollar for your rare gems. if your not sure if its rare or not, list it. check popsike and collectorsfrenzy if you need to. you can check on discogs if there are twenty other copies for sale at 5 bucks (then its not rare).

    if i were you id worry less about the 10-15% fluctuation you may have in different markets and worry more about how much time youll end up wasting in each venue. sometimes the best option is bringing it to your favorite store, getting 50% and spending one hour of your time. no ebay or paypal fees there.

    last thing...records are a hobby for me,but i sometimes try to quantify the time i put into things. is it worth it for me to spend an extra 8 hours packing records and standing in the post office lines? my time @ $10 hour usually negates the 10-15% extra i might make

    sorry for the long post. good luck!
  • soulcitizensoulcitizen 304 Posts
    price them at what you would be willing to sell if a stranger came up to you and offered you x amount for an item. If you're making a profit and generating cash, why bother with the paranoia that you sold it 'too cheap'. In the meantime you can turn that cash into something else and make the money anway, or cover your ass and deal with those debts, etc. I bought a 45 last Sunday for ??1, I sold it on discogs in 1 hour for ??25. I could possibly have held out for ??40/50 but then it doesn't really mean much if nobody buys it, it's basically worth nothing and i've spent ??1 and have a useless piece of plastic in front of me. Multiply that my all your items and when the money comes in you'll probably be happy. I was.

    Just my take, tired of people who think they have the crown jewels all the time and don't have any money because they're too afraid someone will make a buck out of them (not aimed at you there, generalisation on a number of people I know work this way)
  • finelikewinefinelikewine "ONCE UPON A TIME, I HAD A VINYL." http://www.discogs.com/user/permabulker 1,416 Posts
    soulcitizen said:
    price them at what you would be willing to sell if a stranger came up to you and offered you x amount for an item. If you're making a profit and generating cash, why bother with the paranoia that you sold it 'too cheap'. In the meantime you can turn that cash into something else and make the money anway, or cover your ass and deal with those debts, etc. I bought a 45 last Sunday for ??1, I sold it on discogs in 1 hour for ??25. I could possibly have held out for ??40/50 but then it doesn't really mean much if nobody buys it, it's basically worth nothing and i've spent ??1 and have a useless piece of plastic in front of me. Multiply that my all your items and when the money comes in you'll probably be happy. I was.

    Just my take, tired of people who think they have the crown jewels all the time and don't have any money because they're too afraid someone will make a buck out of them (not aimed at you there, generalisation on a number of people I know work this way)

    Thanks for all the recommendations so far.

    @ soulcitizen the collection I bought was quite expensive, so I'm trying just to recoup the money I paid. No 1$ dollar bargain here, so my situation is different. Being broke as fuck at the moment, I now regret buying it in the first place. But there were so much gems in there that i couldn't resist.
  • cpeetzcpeetz 2,112 Posts
    Ebay is still worth it for collectable records.
    It's always been a gamble.
    Sometimes things go for less than you had hoped, other times much more.
    I sold a record recently that didn't have an extensive "value history", I could only find one
    copy selling on CF or Popsike for around $100. My copy went for $400.
    Never underestimate the "auction frenzy" effect, it's real.
  • 4YearGraduate4YearGraduate 2,945 Posts
    Cpeetz - was that the licorice stick joint
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