# Advice Needed On A Clear-Out



## kevkojak (May 14, 2009)

With a baby due in September my wife and I decided it might be a good idea to clear out the second bedroom. You know, so its got somewhere to live 'n that. 

The plan is to skip the single bed that's in there currently, then find new homes for all our accumulated junk!

Most of it is easy enough...a few books and old clothes that can go to our local charity shop, the 710's old Uni books that can go to the reference library where she works, general tat that is bound for the bin (or a car boot sale - although I always seem to come back with more than I take...  )

Mrs kevkojak has a real problem deciding what to do about her 1000 pairs of shoes (not an accurate count, but probably pretty close!)

My real problem is my CD collection. I have boxes and boxes containing a few hundred old CD singles and albums, mainly from the 90's, that I didn't really want to part with. And they are not going in the damp loft - they'd end up ruined.

Is there any point keeping these now that music can be downloaded for pennies in a matter of seconds? I'll probably never use them again to be honest. By the same token though, will these even be worth selling? I doubt many people are willing to pay a premium for old CD's to take up space when most laptop hard drives hold 200,000 songs...

Some of these are fairly rare, a few ltd editions and a load of American imports, but most are pretty run of the mill and can be found on e.bay for a couple of quid.

I spent my youth trawling boot sales and local record shops hunting for rare and unusual dance, indie, Rap and R&B CD's, and now evidently it was a wasted effort. The CD's that were to be my retirement nest egg have gone the way of the 8-track!  (mind you, if I hang on until I retire in 2050 or something they probably will be worth something! ^_^ ).

Any suggestions? If they might pull a few hundred quid in then they can go towards decorating and filling the nursery, but if not what should I do? Looked at airtight plastic containers to put in the loft but the hatch to get in there is only a couple of feet wide, I'd need loads.


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## dtc2 (Mar 7, 2010)

I throw away the plastic cases CDs come in and put the CD and sleever notes into a thin flexible wallet. It massively reduces the space they take up.

but CDs are far to modern for me i'm still buying and playing vinyl.

when No2 came along I had to disassemble my record room to make the 2nd nursery and now my turntable has ended up next to our bed the wife loves it :afro:

a little bit of soul blasting to wake her up on a saturday and sunday morning.


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## handlehall (Aug 7, 2009)

When you get the answer let me know will you - I'm in the same position junk-wise (no babies thank god) with the addition of old film cameras - OM1 + lenses EOS etc shelves of books.

I think the solution is to accept these things are worthless (in monetary terms) and let them go - easier said than done.

There, that was a big help wasn't it


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## MarkF (Jul 5, 2003)

Carolyn gave away all my vinyl albums by mistake, there were 2 piles, "keep" and "give away", many were not only irreplacebale but valuable too. I was distraught.....................................for about half an hour, when I realised that they were just "stuff".

Your loft should not be damp, you'll incur big expensive problems unless you address that issue.


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## kevkojak (May 14, 2009)

MarkF said:


> Carolyn gave away all my vinyl albums by mistake, there were 2 piles, "keep" and "give away", many were not only irreplacebale but valuable too. I was distraught.....................................for about half an hour, when I realised that they were just "stuff".
> 
> Your loft should not be damp, you'll incur big expensive problems unless you address that issue.


Fair point. The cash value isn't much of an issue, just the time spent accumulating them.

Wish I'd collected comics instead! 

Wouldn't have been quite as good for pulling the birds, but old Marvel ones seem to be worth their weight in gold these days! :wallbash:

The loft isn't too bad these days actually, but half a dozen tiles blew away when we had really severe weather a couple of years ago and by the time we replaced them (only a couple of weeks) the loft was sodden! Don't think it'd do the inlay cards much good.


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## MarkF (Jul 5, 2003)

kevkojak said:


> Fair point. The cash value isn't much of an issue, just the time spent accumulating them.
> 
> Wish I'd collected comics instead!
> 
> ...


It's good to let go off "stuff".

Oh, I thought you'd done something daft like insulated everywhere and bocked all ventilation. Lots of people do that.


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## kevkojak (May 14, 2009)

MarkF said:


> It's good to let go off "stuff".
> 
> Oh, I thought you'd done something daft like insulated everywhere and bocked all ventilation. Lots of people do that.


Hopefully I'll be able to let them go.

Some budding DJ might take them off my hands if I throw up an e.bay listing I'm sure.

Trouble is, two weeks after selling them I know I'll be climbing the walls trying to remember what the B-side to Luniz 'I got 5 on it' was....

(its actually not got a b-side, its just 4 extra remixes of the same song. Bad example!)


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## jwg663 (Feb 26, 2004)

Music Magpie

Never used them myself. Try a couple of "valuable" ones first & then a "cheapy" to see the variation in cash offered.


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## mach 0.0013137 (Jan 10, 2005)

MarkF said:


> It's good to let go of "stuff".


So then Mark, did you get shot of all those old Russian watches you had stuffed in boxes? :huh: :lol:


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## ESL (Jan 27, 2004)

Well, another alternative is not to lose the music, just lose the CDs, ie rip them all to a lossless format and store them on a computer or HD or something.

I store all my CDs and DVDs this way, and then I can always re-burn or transform to another digital format at sometime in the future if I want to watch or listen agaiin.


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

what size are her shoes? h34r:


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

pg tips said:


> what size are her shoes? h34r:


Smaller than yours I expect, you will have to buy yours mail order like every other mid life crisis bloke ....


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## MarkF (Jul 5, 2003)

mach 0.0013137 said:


> MarkF said:
> 
> 
> > It's good to let go of "stuff".
> ...


Mac, Those are horological timepieces, hardly "stuff"







Still thinking about what to do with them, waiting to see what Hawkey is doing with his displays without straps.,


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## mach 0.0013137 (Jan 10, 2005)

MarkF said:


> mach 0.0013137 said:
> 
> 
> > MarkF said:
> ...


TouchÃ© Mark, it is important to differentiate such things


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

mach 0.0013137 said:


> MarkF said:
> 
> 
> > It's good to let go of "stuff".
> ...


Indeedy Doody :rofl2:

Cue Music - (Lone Ranger theme will do) 0- Mrs Mel to the rescue :notworthy:

Mrs Mel sometimes has some good ideas - like when she told me we were getting married - but up in our loft are those bags you see advertised on the telly. Inside them, allsorts. We had the same problem, small hatch to loft, and I wanted to keep some radio and test gear dry and dust free -

"Why don't you take one of the vacuum bags up flat, open it up and put the radio stuff inside the bag up in the loft, then suck the air out with the small Hoover? " :to_become_senile: :lookaround:

-- do you know, she was bloody-well right, works fine, plus it holds 'em tight together, and you can see what's in there. :yes:

I've got hi-fi cables all labelled in a bag, make sure you can read the labels, some vinyl in another, loose leafed textbooks and other stuff up there, can flip through without opening, and see what I've got in each through the plastic, excellent.

:inlove: :jawdrop:


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## Mechanical Alarm (Oct 18, 2010)

You may be really surprised at the value of some of those CD's!!

A few years back I found a value/price guide in an old book store and picked it up, just for fun. CCDPG (Collectible Compact Disk Price Guide [1 & 2] - whew!). A great read! I was really surprised and found I had a certain original issue Elvis album (CD) that was released in the monaural format for just a month or so and it was pretty rare - worth like 500 bucks! There are a whole bunch others others as well but only if in the jewel cases with the liner notes, etc. You can't believe the criteria they use to judge condition on these, etc.! It's some very fascinating stuff - well, to me anyway. I have quite a few worth over $50. I was also one of the 1st idiots to jump on the CD bandwagon when it 1st hit (1980-81 if memory serves me correctly), so I have a lot of the older ones. I remember paying over 800 bucks for my 1st CD player and all it did was play a single with only the basic functions: Pause, Play, FF, Rev, etc.

I remember there is a Prince CD worth over $10K (probably a lot more now), not to mention a lot of high end others from The Beatles, Elvis, etc.! Plus many more obscure artists and titles worth BIG BUCKS!

Some pretty wild stuff... I would certainly have a look before selling to someone or a store for near nothing. You might thank me later.


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## dtc2 (Mar 7, 2010)

Mechanical Alarm said:


> You may be really surprised at the value of some of those CD's!!
> 
> A few years back I found a value/price guide in an old book store and picked it up, just for fun. CCDPG (Collectible Compact Disk Price Guide [1 & 2] - whew!). A great read! I was really surprised and found I had a certain original issue Elvis album (CD) that was released in the monaural format for just a month or so and it was pretty rare - worth like 500 bucks! There are a whole bunch others others as well but only if in the jewel cases with the liner notes, etc. You can't believe the criteria they use to judge condition on these, etc.! It's some very fascinating stuff - well, to me anyway. I have quite a few worth over $50. I was also one of the 1st idiots to jump on the CD bandwagon when it 1st hit (1980-81 if memory serves me correctly), so I have a lot of the older ones. I remember paying over 800 bucks for my 1st CD player and all it did was play a single with only the basic functions: Pause, Play, FF, Rev, etc.
> 
> ...


I'm not questioning what you are saying as you clearly know the topic well but I just can't get my head round some CDs being worth a lot of money.

to me they are a throw away item and not something to cherish.


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## antonbhoy (Jun 24, 2010)

I use these cases. Hard To Find Records, I think thats what they are called, on ebay sell them too.

http://www.slappa.co.uk/cdcases.aspx


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## Mechanical Alarm (Oct 18, 2010)

dtc2 said:


> Mechanical Alarm said:
> 
> 
> > You may be really surprised at the value of some of those CD's!!
> ...


I can't agree with you 100%... but I will say approx. 98% of the time you are correct. It's that 2% where all of the difference lies. I have also come to the realization that everything has some collectiblity to someone, somewhere. Even CD's - The book is like 800 pages! Ebay is banking on it and doing quite well! Gawd, people will collect *anything*! Yes, probably most of the CD's in ones collection are garbage - esp. if they are all of a new variety. However, that 2% (my number) could really be worth something. If you started when I did, in the early 80's (there are collectible disks even well into the 90's), you can probably bump that percentage by quite a bit and have some quite valuable disks in your collection, again, if the condition factor (like any other collectible) is there. Promo CD's are probably worth the most as they were short runs with limited distribution and most of the time the packaging got discarded. Most of the "Limited Editions" aren't worth that much because people tend to save these and keep them in great condition with all of the packaging, etc. (again, "most" - not all, there are a few). Funny, huh?


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