Are Your Books, Games and DVDs Worth Selling?

Media is the category where the work of selling outruns the item. A paperback takes the same photograph, the same description, the same trip to the post office as something three times its size, and the buyer still expects it padded, tracked and exactly as described.

So the first decision is about transaction count. How many separate sales are you willing to run to clear one hallway of stuff?

Scanning an app versus listing each title yourself

A buyback app works off the barcode. You point the camera at the back of the book or the game case, it reads the ISBN or the product code, and it gives you a yes or a no against whatever that buyer wants stocked that week. You walk down the pile, the app builds a list, you box it and send it with a label they provide.

Listing each item yourself is a different job entirely. Photograph, describe the edition and the condition, answer questions from people who never buy, pack, queue at the counter, and wait to see whether the buyer opens a dispute about a crease.

The trade is control against completion. Listing individually is the only route where an unusual title reaches somebody who was searching for it. Scanning is the only route where three boxes get dealt with in one evening. What happens between the scan and the payment - the quote, the inspection on arrival, the revised offer - has its own mechanics worth reading before you post anything: how mail-in buyback quotes work.

Media that held value and media that lost it

Supply is what decides this, and supply is not evenly spread. A hardback that sold in enormous numbers is on every charity shelf in the country. Book-club editions, ex-library copies with the stamps and the sleeve, and celebrity memoirs from a decade ago are all competing against an unlimited supply of themselves.

What still gets searched for: textbooks tied to a current edition, out-of-print technical and trade manuals, craft and pattern books, regional and local history, niche non-fiction that never got reprinted, and first printings where the number line and the dust jacket both check out.

Games hold up better than discs. Cartridges for consoles whose catalogue never got re-released, complete-in-box copies with the manual and the inserts, region-specific releases and boxed PC games from before download-only all have a live audience. Loose discs of sports titles that get a new edition every year do not.

For films, the split is streaming. A blockbuster on three services is a hard sell on disc. Box sets of shows that never made it onto streaming, out-of-print special editions, foreign-language releases with no digital version and anything with a license that expired are the ones people hunt.

Selling as a lot when per-item value sits under the effort line

Every listing costs you the same fixed block of work no matter what is in it. Photograph, write, post, answer, pack. Once the per-item price drops under what that block is worth to you, individual listings stop making sense and the lot becomes the sensible unit.

Lots work when they have a shape somebody can picture: a run of one author, a complete series, a console plus its games, a genre shelf. A random box of forty unrelated paperbacks is not a lot, it is a house move somebody else has to sort. Building one buyers actually bid on is its own skill - how to bundle stuff so it sells faster.

Before you box anything, pull out the odd ones. A signed copy, an edition you have never seen elsewhere, a sealed game. Those get looked at separately.

The weight problem, which is really a postage problem

Books are dense. A dozen paperbacks in one parcel weigh more than people expect, and postage is priced in weight bands that step up sharply. That step is the thing that quietly eats a media sale.

The mechanic is simple and nobody does it: weigh the parcel before you list. Kitchen scales, a carrier bag, the actual books plus the packaging. Then get the price from the carrier's own calculator for that weight and that destination. Now you know what the listing has to carry.

Some postal services have a cheaper rate for printed matter with rules about what can be included - no letter inside, sometimes no discs. Read the rules rather than assuming, because a mis-declared parcel gets surcharged to the recipient. Whether you post at all is worth deciding first: postage versus meeting the buyer.

Independent shops that still buy over the counter

Second-hand bookshops, comic shops, game exchanges and record shops that also take discs still buy stock in person. This is the fastest route in the day, and the one with the least messaging.

Phone before you carry anything. Four questions: do you buy at the moment, are you buying today, do you pay cash or store credit, and is there anything you are short of. Store credit is not cash, and a shop that only offers credit has answered your question.

Take a sample box rather than everything. They will sort in front of you, take what fits their shelves and hand back the rest, so bring a bag for the rejects. They may cap how much they take in one visit. If somebody offers to come and collect the lot from your home instead, that is a different arrangement with a stranger and your address - keep it at the counter.

When donating is the better outcome

Water damage, damp smell, foxing, ex-library stamps, cracked cases, scratched discs, missing manuals, missing discs, VHS. These do not sell, and the hour you spend photographing them is the cost of finding that out.

The thrift store takes the whole box in one trip, and the box stops being in your hallway. That is a real outcome. So is the recycling point for discs and cases, which take a different stream from paper in a lot of places - check yours.

Two honest warnings. If you need money this week, three boxes of media is a slow instrument no matter which route you pick, and the counter-top shop is the only one that pays the same day. And if one item in the pile makes you hesitate, do not send it with the rest to be scanned at a barcode price - set it aside and find out what you are holding: how to work out what a single copy is worth.

Pull the odd ones out first. Then decide about the boxes.