kgrogers1979

Yeah, only keeping 5% of the DVDs you buy is very dumb and very wasteful. This whole thread turned into a very dumb trainwreck the last few pages.

If you're not keeping the DVDs you buy, you might as well go renting/streaming because that is basically what you are doing anyway...

Also, streaming may not be as high quality as BD, but it's definitely higher quality than DVD.

Adam Tyner

He's a reseller, so he buys lots of discs (I'd imagine hundreds at a time) for cheap, keeps the ones he wants, and sells the rest at a profit. It's not my thing either, but it's not dumb or wasteful.

slop101

I seriously have a hard time believing he makes a profit, especially considering time, shipping, etc.

kgrogers1979

How do you make a profit selling used discs? I can't imagine the market for used physical media is very good considering the market for new physical media isn't even good.

Why would anyone pay more than a couple dollars for a used disc when new discs are pretty cheap if you shop around. If, for example, you buy a new disc at $10, to make a profit you would have to sell it for more than $10. Then add on ebay fees, paypal fees, shipping costs, etc and I just don't see how selling used can be profitable. Nobody in their right mind would pay more for a used disc than it would cost them to buy it new.

I guess the one exception may be out of print discs since those can sometimes fetch a high price. However, if you're selling 95% of the movies you buy, I seriously doubt more than a few of them are actually out of print.

mattysemo247

And we are talking DVDs here, not even Blu Rays. So the resell "profit" is going to be even lower.

DJariya

The resale market for DVDs sucks these days. You're lucky to get even $1 for a relatively recent title in resale. In days past, you could get $10-12 for 1 season of a DVD TV series. Now you'd be lucky to get $5 and only if it's relatively new. Most only get $1-3 tops.

PhantomStranger

Some people around here do get uptight when footnotes are forgotten in each and every post. Apparently every statement has to be supported like a PhD thesis.

BuckNaked2k

Very true. I used to churn through Columbia House accounts every week and make enough money to support my habit (my movie habit), and still have extra $$ in my pocket to take my best gal down to the soda fountain for a Sarsaparilla.

These days, it's not even worth trying. Used, even new in shrink-wrapped DVDs sell for a buck or two. I still make a little cash selling SteelBooks, Studio Ghibli Blu-rays, and Korean imports, but the 'glory days' are in the rear view.

morriscroy

Some people are even like that in person offline.

The type of individual who is always asking for citations, evidence, proof, etc ... in their offline face-to-face conversations. Their favorite question is, "How do you know ?"

morriscroy

Around what year did the "glory days" end for selling dvds/blurays in this manner?

davidh777

So we're supposed to just accept the idea that every household in the U.S. will rent 10 movies a week if they'd only price them at $1?

DJariya

I try to see 3 or 4 movies per month in the theater and if I'm lucky, I may rent a few movies every other week. With my already large DVD/BD collection and stuff to watch on TV from my DVR on an almost daily basis, there is no way I could every watch 10 movies per week. And that doesn't even count by Netflix/Hulu subscriptions.

DJariya

I think the resale market started bottoming out like 5 years ago. I recall the resale value for many things I brought to FYE dropping to $1-2 each.

Maybe like 10-12 years ago in it's hey day, I recall selling the original expensive X-Files DVD sets for around $40 something each cash.

Amazon's resale market for BDs and DVDs flat out crashed like 2-3 years ago. 90% of BDs and DVDs are worth less than $1 including full season TV sets. It's not even worth it to deal with them anymore.

You can occasionally get a decent cash price from a place like Secondspin. I recently sold them Grey's Anatomy season 10 for $10, which I bought for $18.

dvdshonna

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BuckNaked2k

Interesting question. I actually kept a spreadsheet of my accounts and how much I would make off each. Sometime early in 2013, my accounts were unable to get "into the black", so I stopped churning and left CH all together. I can still make a few bucks off Disney Blu-rays, but it takes much, much longer to move stock, in part because of the block Amazon enforces on Disney titles.

PhantomStranger

I was mostly referring to other places on this forum when making that comment but it seemed appropriate in this case. That number is way too high since many people average zero movies a week. The only people averaging more than four movies per week are retired people or students for the most part.

morriscroy

If this is indeed the case, then it sounds like only the high volume (re)sellers are the ones who are still regularly making much of anything on selling dvds/blurays in this manner. (Perhaps our esteemed colleague on here Shonna, is one of these high volume individuals).

These days I don't even bother selling dvds, blurays, music cds, video game cd-rom/dvd-rom discs, etc ... I found out the local indie record stores which sell 2nd handed stuff, typically only offer $1 (or less) to buy old discs.

Now I end up giving away most of my old stuff to local friends and relatives.


More generally, the only things I would bother selling these days, is something really huge like a house. I don't even bother selling my old cars anymore. (I just keep on driving them until the day they konk out).

morriscroy

(This is strictly my own personal perspective. It may drastically differ from somebody else's).

If movie rentals were $1 a pop, I wouldn't be watching any rental movies at all.

The only reason I watch ANY non-disc-based movies, is because I come across it by chance when I'm "channel surfing" and/or going through the tv show listings.

Believe it or not, my monthly cabletv costs primarily goes into watching 24 hour news channels on all day, mostly as background. (Both when I'm working and at home). I alternate between CNN and CNBC during the day. (ie. The analog cable feed goes into CNBC on an old cathode-ray-tube tv screen, while the digital hd cable feed goes into CNN. Sometimes vice versa).

morriscroy

More generally in any economic supply & demand type arguments, the "supply" part is (relatively) easy to analyze.

The "demand" part is much more complicated and difficult to analyze.

For example in the case of movies, there's the scenario of "tyranny of choice" coming in, which simple supply and demand arguments don't really address adequately.

http://www.economist.com/node/17723028

I remember even back in the heydays of VHS rentals, I frequently walked out of the video store without renting anything out, in spite of hundreds of movies I could be interested in for $2 a pop. (In those days, I was renting out a lot of cheesy action and horror type movies). I would assume this similar type of behavior is still present in a 1000+ movie streaming/rental world.

kgrogers1979

A lot of retired people don't necessarily watch a lot of movies either, especially since the most movies aim for younger demographics.

My parents are retired and they NEVER watch movies period. Seriously. They just don't like movies. The only stuff they watch on TV are sports and channels like HGTV and Food Network. They watch nothing else.

People on this forum tend to be more hardcore movie fans than the general public, and even a lot of people here don't necessarily watch a lot of movies per week. I think that says it all right there. If most of us here don't watch many movies per week, then why would the general public? Saying that the general public watches a lot of movies per week is just 100% pure nonsense. People like dvdshonna who watch a lot are extreme outliers, not the norm.

davidh777

I agree that the streaming selection is very limited. For the brief time I had Netflix streaming (I still get the physical discs due to selection), I had little success finding specific titles I wanted to watch. However, I'm not sure that's how the typical Netflix viewer approaches it. I have Amazon Prime and the selection there is also limited. However, if I were just scrolling around and looking for "something to watch," there's a lot that could kill an evening. Would people take more time out of their week if there were a more appealing selection? Certainly some people would. But for others, it wouldn't make that much difference.

And yes, they don't have new releases because that's not the digital business as it works today. New releases are a la carte, and catalog are subscription services. That could certainly change in the future since, as you say, subscription services continue to take hold, but it would be a drastic change in the movie business as they've always treated new releases and catalog differently.

As others have said, the members of this forum are already outliers, and the general public doesn't watch as many movies as we do. Also, remember those damn Millennials refuse to pay for anything!

rocket1312

Exactly. People aren't going to significantly increase their viewing simply because of changes in content. There's already more content available out there than can possibly be consumed. If they watch 3 hours of tv/movies/netflix a day, they're to continue to watch 3 hours a day even if Netflix suddenly gave them access to new movies. A larger percentage of their viewing hours may be devoted to Netflix, but it's not going to change the quantity significantly.

davidh777

Also relevant to this thread, I think:

I don't go to Costco that often so I don't know if this is a regular thing, but yesterday they had a large endcap devoted to the new Mad Max movie, but not in physical form. It was a card you could buy (around $20, I think) to purchase the movie digitally (redeemable at some Warner site) during the pre-BD window. So this is the same thing as buying the movie early on digital, but represented at a physical store that wasn't referring you to their own service (like Best Buy might). I mean, clearly Warner paid for the promotional space, but Costco thought it was worth going along with it. Obviously they see the numbers since their space for physical media keeps shrinking.

BuckNaked2k

Wow, that's interesting. I bet that type of marketing model with have a life-cycle about as long as DivX.

dvdshonna

This is true. One of our local pawn shops pays 15¢ for CDs (no I'm not kidding) and the others no longer buy them. I pay 25¢ for CDs.

And you are correct, I do sell in volume, but every other lot I buy usually contains real "give aways".

My last lot was 132 DVDs @ $70.00 and 10 Beatles CDs @ $2.50. I sold the 10 Beatles CDs the next day for $25.00

Time wise, the online classifieds are as good as it gets. I wish they had this when I was young. I was setting up at sportscard shows and fleamarkets from 6:00AM to 6:00PM to take in $500.

You can do that on facebook/craigslist sitting on your ass and goofing off all day.

Edit: That was wildly optimistic. I've NEVER made $500 in a day on craigslist/facebook. If I took in $500/week I would be a happy camper. The point I was making is that it's easy money. And I have more movies than I have time to watch.