The music industry has grown, but the way music is delivered has shrunk over the years. People with old album collections who want to sell LPs online can do it themselves or enlist the help of distributors, who can make the process much easier and still quite profitable. Resellers know how to price discs and have more experience selling them online than the average person.
But before you take your records to a reseller and think you’re going to make a lot of money, consider several things. First, what state are your albums in? While most people today do not own record players, there are many who still do, and they are not going to pay much for scratched and played albums. You don’t want to try to sell damaged LP records.
On the other hand, if you’ve kept your albums in decent or excellent condition, you have the kind of albums that people want to buy. Many collectors, thinking ahead, bought albums 20, 30 and 40 years ago and did not even open them. These people sell LP records online, by themselves or through distributors, and they often get the best price for them.
Another thing to consider is who are the artists and what are the songs on their albums. This will affect the price. Wave artists or bands that hardly anyone had heard of “in the past” and that no one knows today will not bring a high price. However, if you have albums in your collection that were (and maybe still are) popular and contain songs that were once hits, you’re in a better position to make more money when you sell LPs online.
An advantage of selling your music to a reseller rather than directly over the Internet is that the merchant will be experienced and will know the value of your records. When you sell LPs on your own, what will you use to determine the price? You will likely overprice, in which case you won’t sell much, or you will undervalue and sideline the records for a fraction of what you could have gotten for them.
As with any collectible, dealers can look at two similar albums and know immediately that there is a huge difference in value between them. Inexperienced people who want to sell LPs online are generally unaware of this difference.
In short, just because you can’t play your discs anymore doesn’t mean that others can’t. If you want to sell them and earn some cash, a qualified distributor / reseller can help you and also offer you a fair price that you might not get if you sell LPs on your own.