chase3001

Anyone know the best place(s) to sell used DVD's in Canada? Or any places online that accept used DVD's from Cananda.

Thanks in advance.

ChristianB

Do you have a local store that deals in used CDs, DVDs and video games? That would be your best bet. Or try selling them yourself? (garage sale, Craigslist, Kijiji.ca) or even Blockbuster/Rogers may accept them for cash or as credit towards rentals/purchases.

The problem is that DVDs are so de-valued now. Nothing is worth much anymore (except for Criterion, OOP titles and TV stuff).

Good luck.

chase3001

I've been trying Kijiji lately with limited success. I didn't know Roger and/or Blockbuster bought DVD's. Thanks.

Corey31

Don't expect much from Blockbuster. I have never traded in there but I saw someone trading in a stack of about 15 movies and got a total of $16 for them.

g

I think you can sell on amazon.ca. I think they have a marketplace like the american one.

Norm de Plume

www.newtownvideo.com

I have been very happy with my two or three big transactions with Newtown.

Brian T

Newtownvideo is good, but as a Canadian, I always compare their prices with DVD Planet's quote machine. It used to be about 50/50 in terms of who paid what, but now DVD Planet seems to have the better prices on most titles that are still in print. OOP stuff can still go to Newtown. However, these places are only really worth the effort IF you can actually ship the package from a U.S. postal address. USPS 'media mail' rates are unbelievably good in comparison with what we pay in Canada, where parcel shipping is just obscene.

In recent months, though, I've taken to listing almost everything on the Amazon.ca Marketplace first, and have been doing phenomenally well, even making back more than my original cost on several titles, such as the $3 and $5 blind buy bargain bin movies I often pick up on my visits to the states.

If you buy a lot of stuff from the states directly, where the selection is always better and the prices considerably lower, you can recoup a lot of "blind buy" money on the Amazon.ca Marketplace if you just bide your time, in large part because a) Canada's not as populated, and a lot of rural areas just don't have retailers that sell DVDs, and b) the retailers that DO sell DVDs in Canada don't stock one-tenth of what's actually available in the U.S. One look at Amazon Canada's prices versus Amazon USA's prices on a LOT of DVDs will illustrate the difference. In fact, a lot of the Marketplace sellers on Amazon.ca are actually based in the U.S., and they sell there because they can get a LOT more than they can on Amazon.com. Of course, the risks of shipping through customs, with the potential for additional fees, means they often wait a loooong time to make a sale (plus it means I can undercut them until the cows come home! ).

The only things I tend not to list are big thick boxed sets (like TV season sets) because the shipping credit Amazon gives is nowhere near what it actually costs to ship those via Canada Post, so unless I know I can unload one for a good $30 or more, and maintain a strong profit margin even after shipping, I usually consider unloading it at Newtown, DVD Planet or one of the local used/trade-in places in Toronto (which generally offer surprisingly fair value).

Also, I find I can ship DVDs up to the size of those double-wide two-disc Amaray cases using Canada Post's "regular mail/letter mail" rates, which is always around $1.80 - $2.25 per package (which leaves a little bit of profit from Amazon's shipping credit). Single-width cases go in bubble mailers, double with in sturdy cardboard mailers. For anyting thicker than that, well, see my previous paragraph.

inri222

What are the requirements for someone who lives in the US to be able to sell on the Amazon.ca marketplace?

hindolio

if im not mistaken, i dont think a us resident can sell on amazon.ca. something about having to have a canadian bank account or something like that maybe? i think i read that a while ago.

Norm de Plume

Is that right? I haven't checked in a while, but I have found Newtown, on aggregate, offers more money. Usually it's just a dollar more or less per DVD here or there, but in some cases it can be substantial. Perhaps the tide has turned since I last compared. Plus, although I can't confirm since I haven't tried it, Newtown might be willing to pay Canadians' shipping costs at comparable U.S. Mail rates (i.e., you send 20 DVDs, Newtown will pay what it would cost to send the same number from a U.S. address). I might ask this the next time I send a shipment. DVDPlanet does not cover shipping at all.
Agreed. It can be very unreasonable, but it becomes less so the larger is the parcel. For instance, shipping a single VHS video via Canada Post within North America, which I have done many times, costs about $6, but if you send 10 or so you'll pay about $15, and the cost rises only incrementally from there.

As for Amazon or such places, I couldn't be bothered. I have a hint of OCD when it comes to clutter. I don't want to sit around waiting for someone to buy something if I can avoid it. Rather just do it in one fell swoop and be rid of the stuff I don't want, even if it means losing a little money.

Brian T

Americans can sell on Amazon.ca's Marketplace, but I'm not sure if it's limited to businesses only. American dealers can sell on the Canadian Marketplace site for sure (you oughta see what a lot of them are charging for those $3 Warner Boxed sets they scooped up by the truckload at Big Lots), and I'm pretty sure individual Americans can, too, but Canadian individuals definitely can't sell on the American site, which is decidedly unfair, especially as we do have a lot of titles that are only available in Canada, and many of us can actually ship from the USA.

Brian T

It all depends on what you're selling, basicallly. Perhaps I didn't mention it in my last post, but I've sold a lot of stuff to both places, entirely based on who was paying more. DVD Planet may not pay shipping, but then shipping a massive box of DVDs from the U.S. rarely costs more than $5 - $7, so if there's enough in the box, I don't mind eating the shipping cost in order to get some good credit, which I use for their 25% off sales. (I know Deep Discount is often cheaper, but it hurts the wallet a little less to pay with credit these days!)

Newtown buys OOP discs, and even Canadian-only releases, which is a big plus, although when I saw how much they were flipping some OOP Titles for on the Amazon.com marketplace (they sell in both countries, surprise, surprise), I started thinking twice before sending rare goodies to them, opting to list them on Amazon.ca instead (and with some success)! I'm pretty sure Newtown won't pay Canadian shipping. It's just too high to ship a big box to the U.S.



Six dollars to ship a VHS tape is ridiculous. When I was selling of my VHS rarities many years ago, I actually started shipping tapes to Canadian buyers FROM the U.S. because it was actually cheaper than using Canada Post, especially if I was on the U.S. on a regular basis anyways. It's amazing that we tolerate it, actually. But where to complain? I can send a single-width DVD for about $2 in a bubble mailer as "regular mail", but if I ship a double-wide case, the price shoots up to about $8-$10. UnREAL. They actually "test" our packages here through this little plastic panel with a slot in it. If it clears the slot, it can ship "regular mail", if it doesn't, open up that wallet, Honcho! Sometimes, sometimes, I can find a forgiving postal outlet where they'll force the double-wide case through the slot (it will fit, but really snug), and that gets me the cheaper rate. Pretty sad, I know, but since Amazon only charges buyers $3.49 per disc (regardless of whether it's a single or a hefty TV season), you REALLY have to make sure you can sell an item high enough to actually profit.

In the states. they stick your parcel on a weigh scale and that's pretty much how they calculate the cost (at least with Media Mail type items, anyways). Here, they weigh it, measure it, and often ask you what's in it (and not just to see if it's flammable, etc.) so they can decide how best to gouge you. Technically, DVDs can't be shipped as "regular mail" but I'd imagine everyone ships them that way anyways just to avoid the higher rates. And I don't blame the postal outlet workers for the gouging either; it all comes down from above.




I'm get this. Trust me, I have the same OCD when it comes to clutter. My collection isn't even kept on publicly-visible shelves because a) it's just another massive dust collector and B) it's a visual cacophony that doesn't exactly accentuate a room.

The general drop in prices of American DVDs has allowed me to blind buy a lot of stuff I always wanted to see, but was never sure I'd want to keep. And at those prices, I have the option to resell at a break-even point, or even make a little profit. Every title is given different consideration, though, as to how much money it will bring in.

Here in Toronto there are several used CD/DVD/Book places (Deja Vu Discs, BMV Books, Sonic Boom, and others) that still give decent payouts for most of the more common titles, especially if, like me, you buy everything in the states and rarely pay more than $3-$10 in the first place. Basically, I check the going rates at Amazon Marketplace, then DVD Planet, then NewTown, and if they're all paying, say, under $3 or $4 for a given title, then I'll set it aside for a trip to these shops (though if it's something too common, like Matrix or what have you, you're better off donating it to the library and at least feeling good about it--most shops here won't even touch over-saturated titles because they won't be able to resell 'em).

In cases where there's a decent chance of breaking even or even making a profit on a title I want to unload, even if I have to wait, then it goes on Amazon.ca Marketplace (and the discs sit in a plastic storage tote, out of sight, out of mind). I've sold a few OOP discs that way, and some other rarities, as well as dozens and dozens of titles from my U.S. shopping trips and online orders that simply aren't easy to find in Canadian stores. Mass unloading to used shops may help me de-clutter faster, but I've discovered after-the-fact that some titles would have brought in a LOT more money if I'd just listed them online, tucked them in the tote, and waited.

With Amazon, sometimes you wait, sometimes you don't: I sold two just today and one yesterday (including, I must confess, a $3 Big Lots item that I decided not to keep, which naturally netted a handsome profit), and three more last weekend, all of them at a profit over what I paid originally. They had each been listed for less than two weeks. Not too shabby.

Norm de Plume

That's another big plus about Newtown, something which slipped my mind earlier. Cash money, not store credit. DVDPlanet just isn't really competitive anymore (this coming from a guy who was a loyal customer since the early-'90s when I was ordering LDs from Ken Crane's (a.k.a. DVDPlanet)). Why would I want credit for a store that doesn't really have competitive prices? I'll take the Paypal payment and be done with it, thank you very much.
I'm not saying Newtown is the end-all, be-all. It's of little use to me to sell a DVD for 15 cents, which is what the offer is for some of them. On the other hand, to get rid of them with little fuss or muss is a plus. Hey, poetry.
Not Canada Post shipping costs, but I'd be happy to get the comparable U.S. Media Mail rate for whatever size parcel I'm sending.
If you're close to the border, or cross frequently for other reasons, which I'm not and I don't, then that's an option.
Yep, I'm familiar with the slotted plastic sheet. 18 mm is the max for a letter, so whenever I sell items from my grey-market collection, I send the DVD-R in a paper envelope to save the buyer money. $1.96 for Oversize Lettermail.
Same here. It's both a boon and a burden, because one ends up with a lot of crap one doesn't want to keep alongside the odd gem.
The problem for me is, no DVD I buy could be considered among the more common titles. That's another advantage to Newtown. It accepts a lot of the rare stuff others don't.
Well, it's food for thought for me, at least. I'm at a low ebb of buying DVDs at the moment, and I only have a small pile of unwanted ones.

Brian T

Hey, I'll give ya that. I've made about 500 in total from them over the past couple of years. I really lucked out with an OOP Canadian disc called The Arrow (a great CBC miniseries from about 10 years ago) that turned up in the Walmart $5 bins in Canada after it went OOP. Newtown was paying up to $22US a pop for those. Discovering that, I cleaned out a few Wal-Mart bins and have made a nice little profit on those (though this isn't a habit, I assure you!). Newtown's price is now around $15-$16, which is decent, but I've taken to listing them on Amazon.ca marketplace instead, where I can get upwards of $25 a piece. Like I said, it all depends on the individual title, actually. (though I REALLY wish I'd hunted down more of those Arrows! )

I do maintain a "cart" at Newtown where I keep an eye on the payouts for a lot of my OOP stuff, so I'm sure they'll get another shipment eventually.




I've unloaded a few 80-centers (+/-) to Newtown over the months, mainly because I'd already exhausted the other options. DVD Planet wouldn't take 'em, the used shops wouldn't take 'em, and Amazon.ca Marketplace was fetching about the same, so in those instances, I have no problem just clearing 'em out.

At 15 cents though--heck, I've seen some on there for 3 cents!--I'd rather just build up a little pile of those, stick 'em in a grocery bag, and drop them off at the nearby branch of the Toronto library. At least there I know they're likely to be enjoyed by more than one person, and for free, and if the library should decide to sell them off in one of their fundraisers, more the better! It's a good cause. My old public library in Sarnia was the beneficiary of a LOT of my stuff over the years, including about 150 Hong Kong DVDs and VCDs, and Korean DVDs and VHS tapes, which proved to be immensely popular among the growing populations of those cultures in the community. Three years on, I still pop in once in a while to see if my babies are still there. How pathetic is that?




I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Are you referring to shipping the package FROM the U.S., though? Or getting the U.S. shipping rate from Newtown and using it toward the Canadian shipping rate? The latter would still eat into your profits big time, knowing Canadian rates, but any savings counts I guess.




Indeed. Though I now live in Toronto, I spent a good 25 years in Sarnia which is on the border with Port Huron, Michigan, about an hour north of Detroit, and still visit there every three weeks. A friend and I have kept a P.O. box over there for over a decade now. Thanks entirely to that, not only do I shop almost exclusively on the U.S. DVD and overseas DVD sites, but before I moved I was able to sell tons of old "collector" stuff via ebay without incurring Canada Post's usurious rates. Being able to tell buyers I could ship from the U.S. (and much faster as a result) was a big motivator in getting them to bid up. Don't use it as much these days. Too difficult to commit to a ship date when I'm this far away and plans (or weather) could derail my trip home. So at this point, the U.S. method has advantages, but some definite drawbacks, which is why, like you, sometimes I just gotta unload a whole bunch of stuff at once, just to clear my place . . . and my mind!




Still, I find that I can usually make most if not all (and sometimes more than) my original investment back when I'm only paying $3-$5 at Big Lots, the U.S. Walmart bins, the DeepDiscount BOGO sales, etc. Just a great time to fill in the mental holes in my "I should at least see that" collection without worrying about taking a huge loss on the resale, if I even resell, of course. And again, ordering/buying much of this stuff from the states, where the selection is simply much larger, means that if I decide not to keep some of the titles, they're probably ones that offbeat Canadian collectors like myself are passively hunting for, but, because this is Canada and we've got many more small, DVD-undernourished towns than we do big cities and suburban sprawl, they can't always find them easily or cheaply. One nice thing about the American dealers overcharging Canadians for stuff that's ridiculously cheap in the U.S. is that I can swoop in and undercut them because I buy from the same place, but don't need such high profit margins because I'm not a business.

Lots of options out there, if nothing else!

Norm de Plume

Maybe they're at the bottom of Lake Ontario or Dief has a pile of them in his casket (inside joke).

The most I ever got at Newtown for one DVD was about $35 for Experiment in Terror, which was still readily in-print at the time. Now it seems to be out-of-print and fetching fairly big money at the auction sites.
Well, if I have a bunch of higher-yield DVDs in an order, I don't mind throwing in a few sub-50-cent ones. But I'm not spending $15 in shipping to send thirty DVDs worth a total of $10 or less.
That is a good idea. Better than them ending up in the trash. Or I could just donate them to Suspect or Queen Video. I have considered that option several times.
That's what I mean. Better than nothing.
Lots of online DVD options in the States. Sadly, not many - if any - realistic ones up here, which I don't understand. I would like to support Canadian business, but I'm not going to spend twice as much or more on a DVD (eg. DVDBoxOffice) I can order cheaply from the States. Amazon.ca has some DVD prices that can't be beat, but that can hardly be considered Canadian. The now-defunct DVDSoon, out of Quebec, had very competitive prices, but its customer service and reliability reputation wasn't great, so I never actually got around to ordering anything from it before it went under.