cultshock

I've cut waaaay back on my buying over the last few years. When I look at my stuff and think how much money I spent on DVDs, Blu-rays and HD DVDs that are now mostly worth pennies on the dollar, I want to go back and kick my past self in the nuts for throwing so much cash down the drain. I've managed to sell off what gems I had (Criterion Chungking Express Blu-ray, baby! Seems to be a common theme in this thread ) and now am figuring out what to do with a large percent of the rest (still keeping my favorite films and TV shows that I re-watch often). Thanks to Brian T for suggesting Amazon Canada marketplace, I've always tried to sell on Amazon US instead but his reasoning is very sound and makes me want to give it a shot).

I've now channeled my collecting urge into music (vinyl and to a lesser extent, CDs), it makes me happy to buy media, and I think buying something that I'll listen to a lot is more worth the money than buying a movie I might watch a couple times for the most part. Plus so far at least, vinyl still seems to retain its resale value.

stvn1974

You have to give them your drivers license each time you sell or trade in items. The computer keeps track of your prior sales and the selling of the same title more than once even though they were different editions and formats threw up a flag. It isn't like I brought in the same exact blu-ray multiple times.

morriscroy

I did something similar around 15 years ago in the mid-2000s, though not vinyl specifically.

I decided to complete my audio cd collection of titles I never had back in the day. It was primarily stuff I never purchased back then, and/or titles which were never releeased on cd in those days.

In the end, it turned out to be a complete disappointment for me and also led to complete utter burnout. I found out the hard way that my middle-aged self had a very different response to the music of my youth. Stuff which would have highly interested me back in the day, basically sounded "generic" or outright boring to my middle-aged ears.

The biggest disappointments were old demo tapes which were almost like "holy grails" back in the day, which were re-released decades later on cd as compilations. It turned out the demo tapes were completely garbage in the the vast majority of cases. Very rare to come across demos which were better than the eventual classical albums the same songs were on.

melasnus

25 years ago I was drowning in cash (so to speak) and spent untold amounts of $ on DVDs, BDs, CDs and computer games.
Not only on new releases, but the best editions of catalog issues I could find (even importing).
I was buying so many, I couldn't find the time to watch them all...
I ended up with around 10,000 disks in total and started donating a lot of them when I sold my house.
Boxes and boxes went to the library.
Wrote them all off that year's taxes.
Roughly speaking, BDs = $10, DVDs & CDs = $5, games = I don't recall (went to my local Boys and Girls Clubs).
No way was I going to sell them for pennies on the dollar.

Trevor

I wish I had taken that route before the tax code changes.

melasnus

I still can't believe those basterds in Congress changed it to where only the very well-off can now itemize.
And no one said anything; everyone just shrugged.
Americans are such sheep...it's depressing how wimpish this nation is.

Adam Tyner

Let's keep it apolitical here. We have a separate forum for that.

Why So Blu?

Libraries don't appraise for value and will not always put donated items into the collection. When that happens they usually just give them to the Friends of the Library and they sell them off to raise funds for the library.

melasnus

Understood.

This is true.
It is (or was) a good system for getting rid of stuff without going thru a lot of hassle.

WeeBey

I went to the library and they wouldn't take anything.

I think some of you guys are overestimating the value of the plain jane discs. Many of the boutique label releases can sell for an ok amount but the rest is difficult to get rid of. I had no choice but to bin them because, otherwise, it would never leave the house.

JeffTheAlpaca

The actors and actresses I like don't make a lot of movies these days so that has cut my spending plus several blind buys that ended up in disappointment has cut down my spending.

Also most of the movies I liked over the years have gotten a Blu-ray release.

DJariya

Why? They just flat out said no and would not accept anything? So your local library does not accept any donations from the public? I've never heard of such a thing.

I've donated hundreds of dollars of DVD, BD and TV sets to 3 of my local libraries and they all accepted them no questions asked.

WeeBey

Yup, they told me it was copyright issues. They won't take BDs, DVD, CDs, or software.

Also, while they take books and magazines they don't add it to their collections, they sell them. I assume they don't sell movies for the same reason I didn't bother, not worth enough for the effort.

orangerunner

This was always my understanding of how libraries operate. When a book or DVD is donated to the library they can only re-sell them along with their discards. They cannot simply catalogue them and start loaning them out to the public because the library is required to pay hefty licensing fees to the copyright holders. A big part of a publishers revenue comes from all of the public libraries around the world who license their material.

I suppose the library could seek-out licensing rights for a book that has been donated if the demand is there.

rbrown498

Whoever told you guys that is blowing smoke. I used to be a librarian; libraries buy their books and DVDs from all sorts of different places, including Amazon and the book store down on Main Street. Libraries don't have to pay any extra fees on top of things UNLESS they're going to show a DVD to an audience in the library, or unless they're going to circulate an e-copy of a book. Those DO have extra fees involved, but otherwise...nope. If you donated a book that they didn't want, it's much more likely that they refused it because they've already got several copies of it, or it was in bad shape, or it was a paperback that won't hold up to being circulated, or, in the case of nonfiction books, it was old and contained outdated information.

They may have rejected everything because they don't want to catalog and process your donation; that requires time and energy, so many (if not most) libraries buy their circulating items from suppliers that do all of that for them. When the items arrive, they can import the MARC records for cataloging and put them on the shelves with little to no extra processing--no cataloging, no putting plastic around the book jacket, no putting bar codes on covers, no attaching shelf labels.

orangerunner

That's interesting. So technically a library can stock their entire inventory with "free" donated books and DVDs, loan them out to anyone they want and not have to pay a dime to the copyright holders while also depleting the retail sales of the said books, DVDs and CDs because the public can access them for free?

Sounds a bit like an analog version of "Napster"? Learn something new every day!

Why So Blu?

Check out the big brain on Brett!

You are correct (mostly), sir. I would also imagine that he went to a local small town library. I'm part of a huge network and we do not take magazines, encyclopedias, VHS, textbooks, or software. Everything else is fine. What I am starting to see is that very few of what is collected is going to our collection and just gets floated over to the Friends of the Library bookstore. We also don't appraise for value. Once you turn it over to us we can do what we want with it, but we will not declare value on it. If patrons decide to put it on their tax return the donation receipt we give them has a disclaimer that says we do not appraise and it's on them if they get audited.

Why So Blu?

orangerunner

Are the 116,867 public libraries across the United States not an important source of revenue for the publishing houses and authors?

Why So Blu?

It depends.

Here's an article explaining some variables:

https://www.marketplace.org/2016/07/...library-books/

You're asking a different question than what I was originally commenting on with my gif, btw.

Josh-da-man

This is true, for United States libraries, but in other countries (like the UK) there are copyright fees involved in the library system.

WeeBey

DJariya

I had to look this up, but

Whoever told that to you is either a lazy fuck who didn't want to process your donation or flat out lied to you.

Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton libraries gladly accept DVD, CD, record and even video game donations. And I assume this applies to other libraries in Canada as well.

https://www.epl.ca/give/#how

https://tplfoundation.ca/donate-books/

https://www.vpl.ca/policy/donate-materials-vpl

I knew that just didn't make any sense.

WeeBey

orangerunner

Thanks for the link. It's fair to say different libraries in different cities/countries do have different policies and purchasing arrangements.

The issue our local libraries are facing is the high cost of the digital books as compared to the paper versions. The nature of digital is that the library will never need to replace their book purchases.

Since the publishers recognize that libraries will never have to replace them, they charge something like $120 per "copy" for digital as compared to $40 for a paper version to make-up for the lost revenue of future replacement purchases.

Example, when a new Stephen King book comes out the library needs 5 copies in circulation for the first year or two. After that they probably only need two copies. If three copies of the paper wear-out within the first year or two, they don't necessarily need to be replaced. With digital the libraries pay more per copy and then are stuck with all five copies regardless of the eventual decline in demand.