Very large collection going up for sale

[u***@gmail.com]

I am in the planning stages of selling my collection of about 1000 video laserdiscs of 20th century movies. I'm in central California and have no interest in shipping, as the weight of the disks is prohibitive.

I am still trying to decide if I should sell them individually, or as a bundle only. I am hesitant to go through the process of cataloguing the entire collection, as that could take weeks.

Any suggestions?

For more info: ***@gmail.com

[Thad Floryan]

Post by u***@gmail.com
I am in the planning stages of selling my collection of about 1000
video laserdiscs of 20th century movies. I'm in central California
and have no interest in shipping, as the weight of the disks is prohibitive.
I am still trying to decide if I should sell them individually, or as a
bundle only. I am hesitant to go through the process of cataloguing the
entire collection, as that could take weeks.
Any suggestions?

Without a comprehensive list I fail to see how you will attract anyone's
attention to your collection.

A comprehensive list would include title, catalog number, P/S or widescreen,
sleeve/box condition, disc(s) condition, and more info as can be seen at the
LaserDisc Database:

http://www.lddb.com/

If you don't want to spend the time (including estimating the pricing), you
might want to contact an auctioneer company who'll take your collection on
consignment and do all the cataloging and selling and eventually giving you
some percentage of the receipts which may or may not be negotiable.

I have never dealt with an auctioneer company, so you might want to check
BBB reports, Yelp, and similar reports/reviews.

Googling "laserdisc auction" finds hits that might be useful. Hmmm, doing
that found this page (among many others) showing a collection list:

http://www.lddb.com/collection.php?action=list&user=bcapas

Thad

[u***@gmail.com]

Post by Thad Floryan
Without a comprehensive list I fail to see how you will attract anyone's
attention to your collection.
A comprehensive list would include title, catalog number, P/S or widescreen,
sleeve/box condition, disc(s) condition, and more info as can be seen at the

Thanks Thad. I'll take a look into just how much work that would be. Quite frankly, it's probably going to be more daunting that I'm up for. I think I'm looking for the big unload. :)

Will be back in the days to come with more info.

[Bruce Esquibel]

Post by u***@gmail.com
I am in the planning stages of selling my collection of about 1000 video
laserdiscs of 20th century movies. I'm in central California and have no
interest in shipping, as the weight of the disks is prohibitive.
I am still trying to decide if I should sell them individually, or as a
bundle only. I am hesitant to go through the process of cataloguing the
entire collection, as that could take weeks.
Any suggestions?

Depends what you expect I suppose.

Realistically these days, if you just want to unload the collection for fast
cash or because you are moving and don't want to deal with them, simply run
some Craigslist ads in the major cities around you for like $2500 for
everything and keep you fingers crossed someone will pick up the load for
$2000 as best offer.

Honestly, I'm sure you have a few gems in the $50+ range to some collector,
maybe a few more in the $10-$15 range, but the majority is likely in the
"barely worth a buck or two" range.

If you are looking to maximize profits, you really have a lot of work ahead
of you. Each one needs to be cataloged with title, catalog number, country
of origin, disc format, even checked for rot and what kind of sleeve the
disc is in.

Even then, after all that, maybe you separated 50 to 100 of them that would
be considered "premimum", but what do you do with the other 900-950 of them?

Putting them up for sale with a walk-away price of $2000 would actually
attract people to consider dropping the cash and cleaning you out.

Trying to do it peicemeal, you'll be staring at them for months or years to
come.

-bruce
***@ripco.com

[u***@gmail.com]

Post by Bruce Esquibel
Realistically these days, if you just want to unload the collection for fast
cash or because you are moving and don't want to deal with them, simply run
some Craigslist ads in the major cities around you for like $2500 for
everything and keep you fingers crossed someone will pick up the load for
$2000 as best offer.

I guess that was about the advice I was expecting... but thank you for it. I needed to hear it from someone else. Quite frankly, I have no desire to expend the energy of cataloging them. Maybe I'll just take a picture of the entire collection, which fills a 4'x8' bookshelf floor to ceiling, and put it on Craigslist to the highest bidder - bookshelf and all. I said there were 1000... but I think there's more likely to be about 950. And yes, there are indeed some real gems in there, as well as some that are of questionable value. I am not the original purchaser and have only watched 15-20 of them over the years. I'm just not a movie guy and I don't have a good feel for their value.

I can tell you that the original purchaser was an early adopter of the technology and stopped purchasing them in about the year 2000. As you may imagine, they spent a small fortune at the movie store. There's also lots of children's movies and things about technology, such as exotic cars and aircraft, etc.

This isn't something I have to do soon. Yesterday was my first look-see at this newsgroup, which appears to be one of the better resources available for this technology. Maybe I'll spend a little time figuring out just what's in the collection... oh boy... that's work. Will be back in the days to come.

Thanks Bruce, and the others who commented.

[u***@gmail.com]

Posted the Craigslist ad for Visalia here: http://visalia.craigslist.org/emd/4177235349.html

Also posted in Fresno, Hanford, Bakersfield and Lost Angels (South bay - west end).