Amazon Selling - It's Singles Time! (2/2)

Following on from part 1, hopefully in this post I can shed a little more light on how Amazon's second-hand marketplace for CD singles (and albums) works and make a few observations about the pricing models of the big sellers (and the smaller ones, while I'm at it), the preponderance of certain - mainly international - sellers on all the major listings, the speed at which the market moves, and so on.

But before all that, let's look at the difference between reselling albums and singles. Albums are usually easy; enter the barcode, it'll be listed and you can (if you wish) enter that listing with the minimal of fuss. CD singles, on the other hand, present a whole set of difficulties (although it should be said that they do apply to some CD albums too, just on a far lesser scale):

1.  Promotional Copy - Not For Resale

This was my biggest obstacle in identifying a pool of 250 CD singles to check out. I reckon I've got about 750 CD singles, but more than half of them are promo copies. I'm really not sure of the legality of reselling these, although I know a lot of people do, particularly on ebay and at actual physical shops such as Record & Tape Exchange (I don't think I'm sticking my neck out too far to say that most music journalists offload their unwanted promos in this way). However, Amazon have probably got some rule about this sort of thing, so wanting to stay on the safe side, I chose only properly-released CD singles for this. Which leads on to...

2.  Barcode recycling

With barcodes being only 13 digits long, then there's only ever going to be a limited quantity active at one time. This seems like a lot (the logical guess would be ten billion, but there's more to it than that). And when you consider that more-or-less all items that can be purchased are now barcoded by convention (for more on the current system and its restrictions, etc. - EAN-13 - should provide more information is strictly necessary), from tins of beans to high-end luxury stuff and everything in between, then it's inevitable that barcodes are recycled after a certain amount of time.

This seems to be particularly pertinent to CD singles, what with them being a particular form of ephemera and that. For instance, companies go bust and their unique identifier gets assigned to another company, or a company deletes some of its back catalogue and re-assigns the codes to new products.  I'd estimate that about 50 out of the 250 I checked fell into this category - not a big problem, it just means searching manually - but it did add to the work required in getting the data.

3.  False barcoding

For some reason that I can't quite fathom, a lot of small indie labels don't even bother with official EAN numbers and seemingly just make up a 13-figure number that "looks right". Presumably, they do this because they mainly sell mail-order (yes, this sort of thing still goes on) and it makes their "product" look more "professional", so it doesn't really matter. But it does get a bit frustrating when your obscure early-90s rave CD is apparently a Tesco lettuce. Again though, this is no big deal really.

4.  Multiple versions

CD singles are usually released in a myriad of versions that are quite difficult to distinguish apart. For instance, there'll typically be one or more UK versions, one or more US versions, Japanese versions, European versions, slightly altered remixes and so on. All should be barcoded differently, but they aren't always. It makes figuring out exactly which version you've got quite difficult sometimes and selling in a specialised market like this, it's quite important to identify the right listing (assuming you want to sell).

5.  Fragility

Normally, CD singles are housed in a thin plastic jewel case (as opposed to the full size jewel cases that albums generally use). These thin cases are notorious for being easily damaged (especially if in a large stack, but I've only myself to blame for that) and it's not unusual to find that either the front or the back has cracked, which could take your "Condition - Like New" right down to a "Condition - Acceptable". That's a big deal to collectors, but fortunately replacement thin CD cases are very cheap and can be replaced easily, so it's a problem easily solved. A thing that presents more difficulty, though, is the preponderance of...

6.  Cardboard Sleeves

Obviously it makes sense to use these; it cuts down on shipping costs (at both ends; the record company saves money on shipping, as does the potential reseller. However, they accumulate dust, dirt and extraneous markings over time, no matter how carefully you store them, and it's almost impossible to restore the sleeve to its former glory. And as the sleeve is an integral part of the item (i.e. front and back are connected), it's rarely feasible to rehouse them into a proper case to solve the problem. So I tried to avoid them when choosing my 250. Also:

7.  Price tags

For some reason, some record shops still use non-peelable labels in their price guns. For CDs in a plastic housing, this is no big deal as you can remove the price tag quite simply, either with a proprietory sticker remover or a solvent (medicinal alcohol is particularly effective). But you can't do this to a cardboard sleeve without leaving an even worse mark, rendering the item pretty unsaleable (and this matters a lot to collectors, unless it's something super-rare).

8.  Minor scratches or blemishes on the CD itself

These won't stop the CD playing - they'll make no difference whatsoever when it comes to that - but such things devalue a CD like you wouldn't believe. A "Like New" CD with a tiny scratch on it will be brought down to an "Acceptable" CD. Again, this wouldn't seem to matter much normally, but in an increasingly-dwindling collectors' market, it matters a lot.

There's a few other things I could mention, but I they're the main ones I encountered. Most of them can be somehow circumlocuted or avoided, so let's put them aside for now.

So, as promised, some observations:

- Major resellers and their pricing models

As I repeatedly and tediously mentioned in previous posts about selling second-hand CDs, it's fairly apparent that most of the big players simply set their price as high as they can get away with, while still maintaining the lowest offer. You can hardly blame them, it's a standard business model, although it does seem a bit immoral when that price is nearly a thousand pounds for a single CD, in this case Joey Beltram's classic "Energy Flash". It'll be interesting to see what happens if I list my copy (although I don't want to sell it, obviously).

When two of the major players have the same CD for sale, it can get quite funny watching them undercut one another penny-by-penny. For common CDs, this leads to multiple copies ultimately being available at a penny each, which just depresses the market for everyone else. However, for rarer CDs, they must set minimums, as can be seen here:

- Disappointingly, the major players don't seem guilty of collusion

You might remember this from an earlier post:

Which then, after Ocelot Europe dropped out, turned into this:

I speculated at the time that these two companies - OnlineMusicFilmsGames and KELINDO³ were in collusion with one another (or may even be two sub-businesses of a larger concern). At one point the price was driven down to £45.16 (with KELINDO³ cheapest) but at the time of writing, the situation has returned to "normal":

Actually, looking at that, it does look as though they're in collusion! I don't think they are, though.

- For all the common penny CDs, there's loads of MUCH higher offers

Lots of common (i.e. CD singles that sold lots of copies on initial release) are available from a bewildering amout of sellers, with the cheapest offer almost always being a penny. For instance, should you want a copy of The Prodigy's "Breathe", there's 131 sellers offering it, 25 of them at a penny. This is where it gets curious; what are the other 106 sellers doing? I can think of a few reasons:

1.  Small private sellers unwilling or unable to compete with the big boys

This makes sense, as it's not worth their bother selling at a penny to realise a profit of - if they're lucky - a few pence, once fees, postage, etc. are taken into account. In fact, without the postage discounts available to the big sellers, it's more likely that they would actually lose money on the transaction. So it makes sense for them to price at a couple of quid or so, guaranteeing at least a small profit should the item sell.

2.  Sellers with copies in "collectable" condition (or new, sealed copies)

Again, this makes sense, as the penny CDs rarely go beyond "Condition: Excellent" and collectors are often willing to pay quite a premium for an unused copy.

Making less sense, though, are:

3.  Sellers who feature on most of the common listings, but at uncommon prices

There's at least two sellers (Japan-Select and japazon) that I can think of who seem to crop up with copies of extremely common CDs, typically priced somewhere between £8.00 and £13.00 (for instance on "Breathe", Japan-Select have a copy priced at £8.26). As their copies are rarely in especially good condition, I've no idea what they're doing, but they've got nearly 6,000 ratings, so some people must be buying from them.

4.  Sellers with "New" copies

To continue with the example of the Prodigy's "Breathe", you can - if you're daft enough - pay anything from £13.95 up to £46.88 for a copy. Granted, these are "New" copies, but that's one hell of a premium, especially considering that you can pick up a "Used - Like New" copy for a quid which is as likely to be in as good nick.

4.  Sellers who either have no idea what they're doing or are simply "trying it on"

These ones I just can't get my head around. Again, with "Breathe", there's a copy at £8.72 that is only "Used - Acceptable" (the lowest permitted condition), plus a whole myriad of "Used - Very Good" copies going for seemingly random amounts (£8.26! £8.72! etc.). Given that there's at least ten copies in the same condition going at a penny, this just seems nonsensical.

- Weird discrepancies in price

Why is the lowest price for Love Decade's "So Real" (which actually made #14 in 1991) £22.91, when the lowest price for Bizarre Inc.'s "Playing With Knives" (a far smaller hit, #43 earlier the same year) is just £0.23? Why £12.94 for Orbital's "Mutations" (#24 in 1992) but only £0.01 for Definition Of Sound's "Pass The Vibes" (#23 in 1995)?

And even more oddly, why only £0.09 for Islands' "Rough Gem" (not a hit at all) when the best price for La Roux's "In For The Kill" (a massive #2 hit in 2009) is £4.43?

Undoubtedly, a lot of this sort of thing comes down to the big resellers getting lucky and happening upon an obscurity, but not all of it. I really have no idea.

- Some CD singles aren't listed at all

Of the 250 CDs I checked in part 1, I found eight that weren't available at all on CD:

Altern 8 - Everybody
Altern 8 - The Vertigo EP (Infiltrate 202)
Finitribe - Ace - Love - Deuce
Frankie "Bones" & Lennie "Dee" - The Looney Tunes EP
Shades Of Rhythm - Homicide/Exorcist
Tekno 2 - Psycho
Unique 3 - No More
Wishdokta - Bannana Sausage

However, all eight were available on vinyl, which kind of makes sense as they were all techno/dance/club records and probably more vinyl copies were pressed at the time of release. Presumably though, it means I could list my copies and - were I less scrupulous - choose my own ridiculously high price for each. That said, I sincerely doubt that there's many people out there crying out for a CD copy of Unique 3's "No More".

In fact, I think most of the twenty most expensive items listed in part 1, pretty much all of them were available at a cheaper price on vinyl.

- Conclusions

After all that, disappointingly, I don't think I've learned anything that I'd not already worked out from dissecting Amazon's albums market. The singles market might feature a slightly different set of "major" resellers, but they seem to operate along much the same principles. Still, it's nice to know that I've got a good number of CDs that I could conceivably sell if I wanted to make a few quick quid.

So (assuming you've made it this far - in which case congratulations...you must be bloody mad, or bored, or both! - apologies for not unearthing anything particularly interesting. However, I've enjoyed writing these pieces and if you've found them in any way informative, then that'll do me.

Now I'm off to listen to some more Klubbkören! I would advise you to do likewise, not that I'm the boss of you or anything.

Amazon Selling: It's Singles Time! (1/2)

All my adventures with the large resellers of CD albums on Amazon - yer Music Magpies, Momoxes, Dodaxes and the like - are handily summarised in this post, just in case you're bored or masochistic enough to want to read them. Anyway, at the end of that post I hypothesised that - as I thought at the time - the big resellers don't seem to be interested in buying them, then this might be a more promising market in which to sell. Now, I could have sworn when I embarked on this epic adventure, all four of the big resellers - Music Magpie, Zappit, Ziffer and Momox - stated explicitly that they purchased only CD albums. No singles, please, thank you very much, please come again.

But it turned out that I was wrong; some of them do accept singles. Not as high a proportion as they buy albums - while Music Magpie will take pretty much any CD album off your hands, for instance, they only accept about 25% of CD singles - but they're obviously interested in certain items. Now, I've not checked exhaustively for two main reasons: (1) it quickly gets frustrating to get prices when only about 1 in 4 are accepted and (2) they are all rip-off merchants anyway. Therefore, I'm done with them and their ilk; I've no doubt that provide a service for certain people, but not for me. So for my CD singles survey, I've simply noted down the lowest prices that they command on Amazon's second-hand marketplace.

Before moving onto the nitty-gritty, let's have a

- - -  SUMMARY STAT ATTACK!  - - -

Of the 350 CD albums considered in the previous posts:

The sum of lowest prices was £901.43 (about £2.58 each). Now, that doesn't sound too bad until you consider that there some significant outliers, reaching right up to £48.12 (I found 15 which had a cheapest price over £10.00). But then again, this is offset by the enormous number that command only a penny each (you can pay more, of course, but I'm looking only at cheapest offers for this whole "thing"). 99 of the 350 (28.3%) are penny CDs, mainly sold by Music Magpie.

So by removing the top 25 and bottom 25 and considering the middle 300 only, the sum of lowest prices is £446.36 (or about £1.49 each, i.e. even worse).

So let's do the same for singles. Selling CD singles is a bit more complicated than selling albums for a number of reasons (the main one being that I'm unsure whether you're allowed to sell promotional copies (marked "not for resale"), plus some others which I'll go into in more detail in part 2).

Anyway, I thought I'd stick on the safe side and found 250 that I thought I could legitimately sell in the usual manner, i.e. all original barcoded copies, legitimately bought new (although therein lies an interesting story, detailed in part 2; let's not get sidetracked here).

Of the 250 CD singles I looked at:

The sum of lowest prices was £1,572.91 (or about £6.29 each). "Blimey", thought I. However, there was one significant outlier that skewed the whole thing; removing that reduced the sum of lowest prices for the 249 remaining to £574.17 (so about £2.30 each), or slightly less than the average price commanded per album.

Performing the same exercise (removing the top 25 and bottom 25, considering only the 200 that constitute the middle of the list, the sum of lowest prices is £208.10 (about £1.04 each). This was a bigger fall than I expected, but 89 of the 250 (35.6%) were penny CDs, a higher proportion than was found with the albums, so it sort of makes sense.

- - -  SUMMARY STAT ATTACK ENDS  - - - 

Actually, this post is pretty much all stats, but let's not get bogged down in semantics. Here's that all-important Top 20 (I feel like Bruno Brookes!):

1.  Beltram - Energy Flash:  Cheapest offer £998.74 from Revival Books Ltd (1 other offer)

There's something very strange going on with this one (see part 2)

2.  Jam & Spoon - The Complete Stella:  Cheapest offer £79.99 from xyxxxx - International (sole offer)
3.  Prince - Black Sweat:  Cheapest offer £29.50 from Audioland (3 other offers)
4.  Pet Shop Boys - So Hard (David Morales Remixes):  Cheapest offer £27.94 from momox co uk (5 other offers)
5.  Project One - Don Gorgon Comin':  Cheapest offer £24.99 from Wolfman Music & Games (1 other offer)
6.  Love Decade - So Real:  Cheapest offer £22.91 from Revival Books Ltd (3 other offers)
7.  The Aphex Twin - Digeridoo (Analogue Bubblebath 2):  Cheapest offer £17.99 from brettfree (4 other offers)
8.  LFO - What Is House EP:  Cheapest offer £14.99 from shardiko (1 other offer)
9.  Orbital - Mutations:  Cheapest offer £12.94 from momox co uk (5 other offers)
10.  Depth Charge - Legend Of The Golden Snake EP:  Cheapest offer £12.48 from pulserecords (3 other offers)
11.  Felix Da Housecat - Ready2Wear:  Cheapest offer £12.25 from Greener_Books (6 other offers)
12.  The Crimea - Lottery Winners On Acid:  Cheapest offer £9.99 from hippocrates69 (2 other offers)
13.  Fierce Ruling Diva - Rubb It In:  Cheapest offer £9.73 from MediaClearance (sole offer)
14.  Rumer - Into Colour EP:  Cheapest offer £8.73 from OnlineMusicFilmsGames (1 other offer)
15.  Unique 3 - Rhythm Take Control:  Cheapest offer £8.70 from Bahamut Media Group (6 other offers)
16.  Metric - Monster Hospital:  Cheapest offer £8.59 from momox co uk (4 other offers)
17.  That Petrol Emotion - Abandon:  Cheapest offer £8.32 from Bahamut Media Group (3 other offers)
18.  M83 - 0078h:  Cheapest offer £7.69 from Revival Books Ltd (7 other offers)
19.  SL2 - DJ's Take Control/Way In My Brain:  Cheapest offer £7.42 from Revival Books Ltd (3 other offers)
20.  Dinosaur Jr. - Freak Scene:  Cheapest offer £7.00 from Round3 UK (10 other offers)

(Prices all correct @ 13/10/16, although the speed of this market probably means that there have been some moves whilst I've been writing this).

As can be seen, a similar pattern emerges. Certain CDs are out of the hands of the big resellers - in the singles market these seem to be Music Magpie (cheapest on 131 of the 250), Bahamut Media Group (cheapest on 20 of the 250), Brit-Books (cheapest on 12), Greener Books (10), Momox (8) and Revival Books (7) - and these are the ones that mainly command the higher prices. However - as with the albums - if the big resellers price do have copies, they will price them as high as they can, almost always undercutting their next best competition by a penny.

Or, as I like to call it, price-gouging.

So that's the figures out of the way. In Part 2 (hopefully I should get this done by tomorrow), I'm going to detail the myriad problems in selling CD singles as opposed to albums; also I'll take a look at some inexplicable differentials in price between ostensibly as-obscure-as-each-other singles and go into a bit more detail on some of the wild outliers. Bet you can't wait, eh?

(joke)

Amazon, Second-Hand CDs - Update 12/10/16

[WARNING - THIS POST CONTAINS AN ALARMING AMOUNTS OF STATS]

I'm writing so much about this it's getting a bit unhealthy, but I find it fascinating. Regular readers (are there any?) may recall that I had a group of 350 second-hand CDs - all albums - and ranked them by the lowest price each commanded in Amazon's marketplace. Actually, it might be a good idea to do a quick link to each of the previous posts, just in case anyone is insane enough to read them again (and anyway, it might be handy - for me - to have them all in one place), so:

1. Before looking at Amazon, how much would the big resellers be prepared to pay?

2. An attempt to figure out the business model of each reseller;

3. An afterword to the above, in which I thought I'd got a pretty good idea of the reselling model;

4. Fun With Music Magpie, in which we play a game of cat and mouse over a CD;

5. An update, expanding the number of CDs, particularly contrasting Music Magpie's buying/selling prices;

6. A look at the individual CDs commanding only high prices on Amazon, since updated.

To recap, here's the top 20 as they initially stood on 1st October 2016. Due to my rank incompetence, I didn't get all the details at the time (and in my defence, the prices move around so quickly that it's almost impossible to pin them down):

1. Cats And Cats And Cats/This Town Needs Guns (Split album):  Cheapest offer £1,426.19

That one was the obvious standout!

2. The Soul Searchers - Salt Of The Earth:  Cheapest offer £34.97 (discrepancy as the price kept changing as I was writing)
3. Sheila & B. Devotion - King Of The World:  Cheapest offer £40.15 (discrepancy as above)
4. Escort - Escort:  Cheapest offer £39.96 (which fell to £18.95 as I missed a listing)
5. Tap Tap - On My Way:  Cheapest offer £20.85
6. The Delfonics - Adrian Younge Presents The Delfonics:  Cheapest offer £20.11
7. The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra  - The Benevolence Of Sister Mary Ignatius:  Cheapest offer £19.99
8. The Concretes - Boyoubetterunow:  Cheapest offer £17.95
9. Stereolab - Sound-Dust:  Cheapest offer £16.58
10. Josef K - The Only Fun In Town/Sorry For Laughing:  Cheapest offer £14.68

I didn't note the cheapest offers for 11-20, but they were as follows:

11. The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
12. Pablo Augustus - Original Rockers
13. She Wants Revenge - She Wants Revenge [US Import]
14. The Blood Arm - Bomb Romantics
15. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
16. Stereolab - Dots And Loops
17. Slow Club - Complete Surrender
18. Mayer Hawthorne - Where Does This Door Go
19. Shaun Escoffery - Shaun Escoffery
20. Metro Area - Metro Area

So today I thought I'd take a look at what changes had taken place within the list in the last eleven days. As I've mentioned previously, a lot of them seem to change price according to some sort of algorithmic process (largely when the big resellers decide to compete with one another over an album, or when a new seller enters the market), whilst some just change price in a seemingly random process that I still can't figure out.

All that said, I was expecting some changes, but wasn't quite prepared for some of the enormous moves. For instance, there's a newcomer at no. 1, because the Cats And Cats And Cats/This Town Needs Guns split album had been reduced from its ridiculous £1,000-plus price.

So here we go with the Top 20 as it stands (previous position in brackets):

1. (2)  The Soul Searchers - Salt Of The Earth:  Cheapest offer now £48.12 (2 other offers)
2. (1)  Cats And Cats And Cats/This Town Needs Guns (Split album):  Cheapest offer now £45.16 (2 other offers)
3. (115)  The Peppers - Pepper Box:  Cheapest offer now £42.53 (1 other offer)
4. (4)  Escort - Escort:  Cheapest offer now £39.96 (1 other offer)
5. (3)  Sheila & B. Devotion - King Of The World:  Cheapest offer now £35.58 (2 other offers)
6. (11)  The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers:  Cheapest offer now £23.20 (2 other offers)
7. (6)  The Delfonics - Adrian Younge Presents The Delfonics:  Cheapest offer now £21.58 (5 other offers)
8. (5)  Tap Tap - On My Way:  Cheapest offer now £19.61 (7 other offers)
9. (8)  The Concretes - Boyoubetterunow:  Cheapest offer now £17.95 (3 other offers)
10. (9)  Stereolab - Sound-Dust:  Cheapest offer now £16.58 (6 other offers)
11. (19)  Shaun Escoffery - Shaun Escoffery:  Cheapest offer now £14.75 (13 other offers)
12. (10)  Josef K - The Only Fun In Town/Sorry For Laughing:  Cheapest offer now £14.68 (11 other offers)
13. (14)  The Blood Arm - Bomb Romantics:  Cheapest offer now £13.95 (2 other offers)
14. (13)  She Wants Revenge - She Wants Revenge [US Import]:  Cheapest offer now £10.99 (10 other offers)
15. (12)  Pablo Augustus - Original Rockers:  Cheapest offer now £10.79 (9 other offers)
16. (18)  Mayer Hawthorne - Where Does This Door Go:  Cheapest offer now £9.43 (30 other offers)
17. (16)  Stereolab - Dots And Loops:  Cheapest offer now £8.89 (2 other offers)
18. (15)  Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma:  Cheapest offer now £8.75 (23 other offers)
19. (143)  Hardfloor - TB Resuscitation:  Cheapest offer now £7.99 (8 other offers)
20. (32)  The Soul Searchers - We the People:  Cheapest offer now £7.94 (18 other offers)

Aside from the newcomer in the top spot, there are two other obvious big movers, the Pepper Box album, up 112 places to no. 3 (as I recall, someone had it listed at about £2.00 back on 1st October, but that copy was obviously snapped up) and Hardfloor's "TB Resuscitation", up 124 places to no. 19. The other new entry, "We The People" by The Soul Searchers, didn't actually move much in price; it was more to do with the previous best (about £6.99 @ 01/10/16) having been sold. And as with the top ten involved in the previous "Outliers" post, Music Magpie aren't selling any of the 20 above.

Of the three that have fallen out of the top 20:

22. (20)  Metro Area - Metro Area (now £7.49; I think this was due to me accidentally selling my copy, as detailed here;

24. (7)  The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra - The Benevolence Of Sister Mary Ignatius (now £6.99 from who else but Music Magpie);

51. (17)  Slow Club - Complete Surrender (now available at £4.02 from inandout-distribution).

In the wider sample of 350, there were a few other interesting movers:

42. (88)  Metronomy - Love Letters (£4.58 from dodax-online-uk)

43. (119)  Ladytron - Witching Hour (£4.53 from Music Magpie)

57. (111)  Super Extra Bonus Party - Super Extra Bonus Party (£3.90 from marzi)

68. (179)  Dum Dum Project - Desi Vibes (£3.45 from Music Magpie)

86. (210)  (Mixed By) David Holmes - Come Get It I Got It (£2.98 from The Monster Bookshop)

And the ten biggest fallers; every single one of these has fallen because Music Magpie have either obtained a copy, or reduced their price to match a rival seller; either way, they now have the cheapest price for each of these:

99. (38)  Caro Emerald - The Shocking Miss Emerald (down to £2.48)
102. (35)  Best Coast - Crazy For You (down to £2.39)
113. (39)  Haim - Days Are Gone (down to £2.14)
114. (52) Rumer - Into Colour (down to £2.11)
119. (47)  Stereolab - Margarine Eclipse (down to £2.03)
124. (34) Hecuba - Paradise (down to £1.98)
131. (41)  Caribou - Swim (down to £1.62)
219. (54)  The Cribs - In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull (down to £0.28)

294. (110)  La Roux - La Roux (down to £0.01)

297. (63) Mains Ignition - Turn On (down to £0.01)

I'm biased (particularly against Music Magpie), but it shows how readily the big resellers can just stitch up the market; it doesn't matter if they only get a penny per CD, as they make their money mainly through their bulk postage discount. I'm aware of constantly banging on about this, but it can't really be stressed enough that this is the only way to make money selling second-hand CDs through online marketplaces such as Amazon, ebay and the like, unless you're into the "serious collectors" market (good quality and/or unusual vinyl will always rule supreme here).

When I began writing this post, it was my intention to make it the last one; after all, I think I've pretty much covered the subject as exhaustively as I'm able to...but then it occurred to me that the major resellers tend not to buy CD singles, so presumably don't compete in that market (although I'm willing to bet that Music Magpie get in on the act somehow). And I've got absolutely loads of them, including a lot of obscure early-90s rave/hardcore stuff that must be pretty rare. Whether anyone would want to buy any of it, however, is a story for another day...

This Wasn't Supposed To Happen

As I may have mentioned before, I put up a few CDs to sell on Amazon to see what would happen.  I didn't really want to sell any of them, so I set my prices deliberately well above the cheapest available (all except for one, the story of which is detailed here.

However, I'd sort've forgotten about the other few and one sold yesterday (Friday 07/10/16) at £7.76 (plus the mandatory £1.26 postage and packing.  It was my own fault really, the lowest prices were £7.49, £7.50 and so on; I really should have priced it a lot higher.

The album was this one, Metro Area's self-titled debut from 2002; it was in pristine condition so I listed it as "Used - As New", which I considered an accurate description:

So now I was faced with having to send it out without really being geared up to do so.  Fortunately, as an inveterate hoarder, I had a box of 100 CD-sized padded envelopes that I'd picked up from my old workplace for about a fiver, so that cost was negligible really.  But then there was the hassle of packing it up and taking it to the Post Office, having it weighed and classified (107g, Large Letter for those interested) and paying the postage, which was (as again, I've mentioned before, is currently £1.27 for first class post for a properly-packaged CD in a full-size jewel case); this kind of makes sense of Amazon's £1.26 postage addition for CDs as it ensures that minor sellers can't make money on postage costs (sending second class makes scant difference, a few pence less, that's all), and sending out "properly" (as I see it) in fact means a penny lost for each CD sent in this way.

But it does skew the market in favour of the big sellers, whose postage costs per CD - even if they were all sent out in the same manner (proper padded envelope, etc.) would typically be about 75p or less, due to negotiations on volume sales/day.  Add into this that many CDs these days come in cardboard sleeves and so can be sent at Letter rate, bringing the big players' average per-CD postage cost down to about 43p (obviously these rates don't apply to sellers only sending a few items each day; us plebs pay full price).  Anyway, I packed it up (ensuring that it remained in pristine condition) and paid my £1.27 postage the next day (Saturday 08/10/16).  But it doesn't end there, because Amazon like to take a large margin all for themselves, depending on the selling price.

For those interested, the full breakdown for sending this one are as follows:

Selling price:  £7.76 - Mandatory P & P:  £1.26, totalling £9.02.  Amazon listing fees:  £2.58, leaving me with £6.44.  Minus the actual postage cost £1.27, this gives me £5.17 in profit.  I'm not complaining by any means, but it's a far cry from the £9.02 and it means Amazon are actually taking a whopping 28.6% (gross) on the sale, which seems to me a little much.

So, I thought that it's no wonder that the likes of Music Magpie and their ilk list a lot of CDs at a penny each.  With their postage discounts taken into account, they should be making around £0.75 per CD just on postage (that's an estimate, obviously). However, if I was to list a CD at £0.01, I would still be charged £0.99 as a listing fee alone, which ostensibly means that I'd lose quite a bit of money on every item sold.  It makes me think that the big resellers must have some other deal with Amazon when it comes to listing fees, otherwise why do it at all?  Free listings if you can demonstrate that you can sell more than 100 CDs per day?  I really don't know.

Obviously I've a lot to learn if I want to get into this business (which I don't, really).  And I'd obviously have to streamline my process, should I actually do it, like get a printer that actually works without having to literally shove the paper in manually (amongst other things).

Anyway, hope this casts a little more light on the whole process and if it helps anyone else in a similar position, all the better!

Second-Hand CDs - Update 2/2 - The Outliers

Of the 350 CDs considered in the previous post, there were some that command absurd prices on Amazon (although, as previously mentioned, such prices would undoubtedly plummet once somebody else lists at a lower price).  I've chosen the 10 most expensive and will look at them here (and I don't think it's a coincidence that Music Magpie aren't selling any of them, presumably because they don't have a copy in any condition).  That said, things may have changed since I last checked about 12 hours ago.

I was going to separate "New" copies from "Used - Like New", "Used - Excellent", etc., but it seems a bit pointless when looking at prices like these.  And after all, even a CD described as "Good" can be more or less as good as new.

In the classic reverse order of course:

10.  Josef K - The Only Fun in Town/ Sorry for Laughing (5413356090529 if you want to easily search)

Best offer on Amazon:  £14.68 (from besouro).  15 other "offers" ranging from £15.00 to £61.61;

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer still £14.68 (besouro), with 11 other offers ranging from £15.00 to £61.61]

9.  Stereolab - Sound-Dust (5024545157123)

Best offer on Amazon:  £16.58 (from OnlineMusicFilmsGames).  7 other offers, from £19.50 to £50.18);

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer still £16.58 (OnlineMusicFilmsGames), with 6 other offers from £19.50 to £58.48]

8.  The Concretes - Boyoubetterunow (0796818008528)

Best offer on Amazon:  £17.95 (EliteDigitalUK).  3 other offers, from £21.95 to £221.31(!);

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer still £17.95 (EliteDigitalUK), with 3 other offers from £21.95 to £221.31]

7.  The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra - The Benevolence Of Sister Mary Ignatius (5037300785608)

Best offer on Amazon:  £19.99 (encorerecords).  4 other offers, from £21.68 to £91.68;

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer still £19.99 (encorerecords), with 5 other offers from £28.69 to £91.56]

6.  The Delfonics - Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics (0795550002122)

Best offer on Amazon:  £20.11 (KELINDO³).  4 other offers, from £20.16 to £45.12;

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer still £20.11 (KELINDO³), with 4 other offers from £20.16 to £45.12]

5.  Tap Tap - On My Way (5065001043581)

Best offer on Amazon:  £20.85 (World Shop JP).  7 other offers, from £20.91 to £47.86;

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer still £20.85 (World Shop JP), with 7 other offers from £20.85 to £46.56]

4.  Soul Searchers - Salt Of The Earth (5013993572527)

Best offer on Amazon:  £34.97 (GLOBAL FRENCH BOOK).   4 other offers, from £47.34 to £126.06;

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer now £47.34 (Japan-Select), with 2 other offers, £53.89 and £64.95]

3.  Escort - Escort (5055373507118)

Best offer on Amazon:  £39.96 (25Music UK).  1 other offer, at £117.54;

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Turned out I'd missed an alternative (but identical CD), so the best offer now is £18.95 (EliteDigitalUK), with 3 other offers, £38.28, £39.96 - the 25Music UK one - and £117.33]

2.  Sheila & B. Devotion - King Of The World (5051011362729)

Best offer on Amazon:  £40.15 (japazon).  1 other offer, at £79.99;

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Best offer still £40.15 (japazon), but now with 2 other offers, another at £40.15 and one at £79.99]

But the one that blows the rest out of the water:

1.  Cats And Cats And Cats/This Town Needs Guns (Split album) (5060109097337)

Best offer on Amazon:  £1,070.69 (OnlineMusicFilmsGames).  2 other offers, £1,070.70 and £1,874.61). Yes, you did read that right.  I had to take a screenshot, as this sort of thing can't possibly come up very often:

I can't believe that any of these are going to ever sell at those absurd prices, particularly when a number of them can be downloaded - from Amazon itself - for as little as £7.99.  I know some people like to have the physical object, but surely there are limits?

Anyway, if you've got any of these, I'd suggest you list them pronto.  Although in the time it's taken me to write this post, the situation's probably changed...

[Edit at 1.48am, 02/10/16]  The big one has indeed changed, but not in the direction I expected...

So Ocelot Europe have dropped out and the other two have put their prices up to a point midway between Ocelot's (now gone) price and their own.  What is going on?  I'm tempted to list my copy at a fiver, just to see what happens].

[Update @ 02/10/16, 1.30pm:  Still just the two offers, £1,426.19 (OnlineMusicFilmsGames) and £1,426.20 (KELINDO³).  Seriously, what are these people up to?]

Second-Hand CDs - Update (1/2)

Following on from my previous posts on selling second-hand CDs on Amazon (the first of which is here, you can find the others easily enough), I thought it might be interesting to have another look at it with an expanded selection of old CDs.  All the previous posts were based on a pretty much random selection of 100 CDs; this time I checked out 350 CDs and deliberately including some that I knew were pretty rare.  Again, I checked the four main resellers to see what they would be willing to pay, then cross-checked with Amazon to find out what they were selling for within their marketplace.

To recap, from the original 100 CDs, the results were:

Music Magpie would accept 100/100 at a combined £32.67 (about 33p each)

Ziffit would only accept 74/100,  at a combined £28.00 (about 38p each)

Momox would accept 88/100, at a combined £31.34 (about 36p each)

Zapper would accept 91/100, at a combined £41.57 (about 45p each)

Taking the best offers to sell all 100 would net £56.57 (on the face of it; as mentioned previously, these companies all - as had been widely reported - make bogus deductions based on their perception of condition, so I'm sure that figure would be downgraded as such).

Now, onto the batch of 350.  The first thing that was apparent was that Music Magpie now only pay 25p (rather than their previous 30p) for a bog-standard CD (and often a lot less for CDs that they must be so overloaded with as to not want any more), so I had to go back through the original 100 and re-rate them all.  That's when the second thing became apparent:  it's a fast-moving market and the prices from all four resellers constantly change, presumably depending on what they sell on a day-to-day basis.  So all I can say is that these results are accurate as of 1st October 2016.

Of the 350:

Music Magpie would accept 344/350 at a combined £135.19 (about 39p each)

Ziffit would only accept 273/350,  at a combined £141.98 (about 52p each)

Momox would accept 317/350, at a combined £137.27 (about 43p each)

Zapper would accept 314/350, at a combined £185.11 (about 59p each)

The increased average prices across the board were because of the obscurities I threw into the mix, incidentally, not because these companies have suddenly become more generous (quite the opposite, in fact).  Taking the best offers for each would net £263.46 (for 347 of the 350; 3 CDs were not accepted by any of the Big Four, although this was down mainly to barcoding irregularities rather than anything more sinister).

So, as before, it looks as though Zapper are the best bet for getting rid of your old CDs - in fact the pricing hierarchy hasn't changed much - it's (1) Zapper (2) Ziffit (3) Momox and (4) Music Magpie - but there are some bewildering inconsistencies when it comes down to particular albums.

As mentioned before, Music Magpie (it does seem as though I've got something in for them, but I haven't really; they are undoubtedly guilty of sharp practice, but nothing illegal) are by far the biggest reseller out there and seem to have a fairly consistent policy on pricing, i.e. one pence below the next best offer.  This obviously means that they always appear top of the listings by price for any particular album.  They're content to go higher - often a lot higher - if they have a new - rather than used - copy, and occasionally they'll be content to be a few pence above the lowest price, so long as their used copy is in "better condition" than the cheapest copy available.  Of the 344 albums that Music Magpie were willing to buy from me (at £135.19 total), they are selling 296 of them at a combined £490.76 on Amazon (plus of course the mandatory £1.26 postage, which I estimate adds another 50p to each CD sold, due to the postage discount that they will receive as a bulk seller).

This looks as though they're making something like an absurd margin per CD sold (around 350%!) but don't forget that they simply reduce their prices as soon as someone else goes lower, so that original £490.76 figure isn't really representative (plus of course it includes the CDs they sell as "New" rather than "Used", which inflates the total quite a lot).  Now, I know I'm on dodgy ground here and don't want to get sued, but I would suggest that some of the CDs sold to them are in such good condition that they bypass the "Like New" category of the "Used" section and list them as "New", thus enabling them to inflate the price for a particular CD by up to 5 times or more and simply not bother competing in the "Used" section.  Shrinkwrapping machines specifically designed for CDs are readily available and I'd be amazed if they didn't have one for just such a purpose.

So, considered as a whole, increasing the pool of CDs from 100 to 350 didn't really add much to what I already knew about the business.  But drilling down into individual albums - the outliers - did, which I'm going to do in part 2.  And that's where things go all weird.

Just a taster...

I couldn't quite believe it until I saw it, but on further investigation, there's a lot more like this:

These are the only three copies available on Amazon, but over £1,000 for a CD (admittedly not one readily available from the usual sources); what are these people up to?

Full version on the way tomorrow.

Fun With Music Magpie

Following on from this post, this post and finally this attempt to understand the business model of Music Magpie and their imitators, I thought I'd try to have a bit of fun with them (I chose Music Magpie for this experiment as they are - by a country mile - the biggest reseller out there and they don't attempt to hide their identity when selling on Amazon, unlike some of their rivals).  I wanted to see how low they would go on a particular album.  Their normal policy - if they had the album in stock - seemed to be to set their price at £0.01 lower than any rival (with certain caveats, as previously discussed).  So, if another Amazon seller priced at (say) £7.99, they would price at £7.98; if another offer was £2.50, they'd go £2.49, and so on, all the way down to £0.01.  Bearing this in mind, my original intention was to find an album that they - and I admit there was some guesswork here - only had one copy of, then beat them down to a penny, then buy their copy for £0.01 plus the mandatory £1.26 postage.  Then I'd sell it back to them, as their buying price would automatically - I assumed - revert to the higher value.

But this didn't quite work out.

The album I chose for this experiment was this one:

When I first looked into it, Music Magpie did not have a copy available on Amazon and so were willing to pay £2.30 for a copy (this has later significance), just to get into the market.  Obviously I didn't take them up on the offer; the cheapest copy on Amazon at the time was about £14 or so.

However, at some point in between me writing the original pieces and today, they must have managed to get hold of a copy. As per their normal arrangement, they then set their price at a penny less than the other cheapest seller.  I think at the time it was £13.14, or similar.  (Incidentally, the buying price on their site fell to £0.68 at the same time, which is actually quite high for them - their average buying price - considering all albums across the board  - is about 33p).

Now, I didn't take proper notes to begin with, I just listed my copy at about ten quid.  Music Magpie had adjusted their offer to £9.99 within the hour.

So then I went straight down to £7.00.  Again, within the hour they were at £6.99.

Next I went to £4.00.  They went £3.99.  I went £3.96, they went £3.95.

At this point I started making notes, and this is how it all played out:

26/09/16, 4.53pm, I reduce to £3.88.  I was lowest for precisely half an hour, at which point Music Magpie reduced their price to £3.87.

26/09/16, 5.27pm, I go straight down to £2.77.  By 5.58pm Music Magpie were listing at £2.76.  It was becoming obvious that they - or their automated system - checked prices every half hour and adjusted accordingly.

26/09/16, 5.59pm, down I go again, but this time to £1.73.  Naturally I was expecting them to go to £1.72 by 6.30pm.  But they didn't.  They had however reduced their price to - guess what? - £2.30.

By 6.47pm it became clear that they weren't going to budge.  Had I found their limit?  To try to find out, I increased my price to £1.99 to see if they would go down any more.  But they resolutely stuck to their £2.30.

So at 7.02pm I increased again to be one penny lower than their offer, i.e. £2.29, to see if this would tempt them into moving down from £2.30.  It didn't.  They were still on £2.30 at 7.56pm and again when I checked at 9.16pm.  And at 10.33pm.

Just to check my theory, I increased to £4.44 at 27/09/16, 12.04am, to see if they would maintain their low price, or adjust accordingly.  And as expected, they increased their price to £4.43 within half an hour.

So, I reckon I've found their formula and plan to have a lot more fun with it in the future.  It's not that I have anything against them, but I think it pretty much proves their sharp practice.

[Edit @ 27/09/16, 1.14am:  I put my copy up to £6.44 once I'd discovered their price floor for this album, as I don't particularly want to sell it.  But Music Magpie only increased their price to £4.98, which seemed odd.  Aha!  Someone else had a copy available for £4.99.  Mystery solved].

[Edit @ 27/09/16, 12.30pm:  Out of interest, I checked the listing again and Music Magpie had increased their price to £6.43 (a penny below my price, as previously mentioned).  So whoever had the £4.99 copy either removed it or sold it, thus allowing Music Magpie to potentially squeeze a couple more quid out of the deal if possible].

Second Hand CDs (Afterword)

Further to this and its second bit, this, I've been asked about how the CD reseller market works.  I'm no expert - for that you'll have to go to the source(s), I think - but I think I've got a pretty good idea about the market and how it operates (for now).

To get this, you have to assume the role of a major seller on Amazon, as covered in the previous posts.  You can't do it if you're just selling the odd CD here and there.  You need to maintain a presence of sorts, which means covering all the bases that you can with the stock you have.  You'll be beaten down to a penny by the other big boys, but that isn't really a problem.

You will get sales at the price you set, so long as it is the lowest price.  This can't really be stressed enough.  It is the business model and it works as long as you have what you say you have in stock, actually in stock (if you haven't, you're in for a whole world of hurt).

As I've mentioned before (repeatedly) the cost of sending a standard CD, packaged in a way to get it there in one piece will cost you £1.20 (second class) or £1.27 (first class), which - and I think I might have commented on this before, y'know - fits conveniently closely with Amazon's default postage rate of £1.26 per CD.  NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING GOING ON THERE.  OH NO.

But that's largely irrelevant, as the large resellers are sending out hundreds - or thousands - of such packages a day, which means that - unless they're very stupid - they will have negotiated a postage discount (almost certainly with the Royal Mail; they have the infrastructure in place to do it whereas the others would struggle, I think) based on volume.  Depending on the quantity that they send out each day, they'll get something between a 25% and 40% discount on their postage if they can demonstrate that they're sending more than about 750 - 1000 packages a day.  A postage sticker has to be applied, sure, but it's not a conventional stamp, it's really just a barcode that confirms valid postage (with the requisite discount).  Plus the Royal Mail will come round to their place of business to pick up the packages, as an added bonus.

It's the world in which we live.  It makes sense on both sides; the Mail get to control the flow of post and the reseller doesn't have to piss about with individual postage and all that stuff.  But it does skew heavily towards the big players and it certainly sheds light on the overall business model of the big resellers.  They can make something like £0.50 a CD by selling at £0.01, simply through maintaining a volume send-out each day.  That's why what looks as though it's mad - a CD for one pence! (plus postage) - makes sense.

And that's why they'll always beat the little sellers; minor sellers just can't negotiate similar postage discounts to make the model work.

At the moment, there's probably about six or seven UK-based vendors making money from this, but the situation won't last forever.  Fewer and fewer physical CDs are being sold and - give it a few years, five at the maximum - the market will be all but dead.  There'll always be a market for weird collector types, but it'll be very much on a one to one basis.  And that's an entirely different market altogether.

The Business Of Second Hand CDs (2/2)

So (1/2) was broadly about what the CD resellers are prepared to pay, in general, for a CD.  And as I mentioned, all these companies have different strategies for selling, so aren't completely comparable.  Interestingly, some items (i.e. those that none of the major resellers have) seem to be traded on a name-your-price basis, but some, curiously, aren't (of which more later).

Going back to the original 100 albums I got a price for (in 1/2), I then had a look at what they were selling at on Amazon (which is where most of the big resellers reside; ebay does come into to the picture, but not on the same scale; although some of the big players use both, it seems that Amazon takes most of the volume).

Music Magpie

As aforementioned, MM were willing to pay a price for each of the 100 CDs; of these, their offer was £0.05 (their minimum offer) for 19 of them, £0.12 - £0.30 for a further 67 and £0.35 up to a £1.00 for the next nine.  Of the final nine, they were willing to offer between £1 and £2 and for the final three, £2.30, £2.50 and £2.50.

Unsurprisingly - as the major player - they have, as a rule, the lowest price on any item that they have in stock.  For (I would estimate) about 40% of these items, this price is £0.01 (plus the £1.26 postage and packing).  For about another 40% of their stuff, they trade at a slightly higher level - usually from £0.15 to about £0.45) - but always ensure that they match the best price if someone else has a copy.  For about 10% of their stuff, they and someone else have a copy, and these items go for curious prices - £2.13, £3.45, £6.95, whatever.  Again, it seems algorithmically-based, as they always match the best price.  Occasionally they go a few pence more, but only if their copy is in better condition than the cheapest offer, and even then it's only ever by a such an insignificant amount as to make no difference.

What was notable about their selling pricing model at the lower end of the market is that it doesn't necessarily correlate with their buying model.  They don't sell all the CDs they buy at £0.05 at a penny, which would be the expected model.  Granted, they sell at a penny on most of them, but it's equally likely to be an another smallish amount - mainly up to about a quid, but I have seen as high as £3.05.  And (yet again) this must be based on some sort of algorithm, as their penny-plus price "just happens" to match - or beat by a penny - the price of the next best vendor.   However, for a lot of their penny CDs, they don't just pay you £0.05.  It could be as much as - and hold onto your hats now - as much as £0.20 each!  I feel sure that this must just be related to the number of copies they have in stock at that time rather than anything more sinister.

On the higher-value items, look out if they're ever willing to offer a price greater than £0.30, as they will be selling it on Amazon for more than £2.00 (often a lot more).  And if they ever offer more than £1.00, it almost certainly means that they don't have it, in which case the Amazon price is likely to be quite high.

Sometimes they haven't got a used copy, but list a "New" copy, generally at a premium price (£7.99 plus).  This only happens when the generally-available price for a new copy of the album is in the price range of a new, physical album (like you'd buy off he shelf at HMV or whatever), so that's pretty much £7.99 - £9.99.

The only times they don't seem to compete is when the only copies available are from other resellers at (generally) absurd prices (£30.00 plus and almost always from Japan).  Hell, Music Magpie sell millions of used CDs a year, I guess they can afford to ignore these weird outliers.  Their model is one of bulk, but (I'm sure) has other aspects, which I shall wildly speculate about later.

Momox

This lot, I'm including, as they also opening sell on Amazon, but seem to be a different kettle of fish entirely.  I'm not entirely sure what their model is; it seems as though it's designed to not lose money, rather than aggressively pursue it.  Almost without exception, if they have a used CD in stock to list, irrespective of condition, they'll list it at £1.49 (plus £1.26 P & P).  Doesn't matter if there's one seller cheaper, or fifty sellers cheaper, they hold steady at £1.49 (plus P&P yada yada yada).

Again, they have their own outliers, where the competition is minimal, in which case they tend to go £7.99 or £10.79, whichever is closer to the other sellers).  Possibly interestingly, the only time that they seem to break with these rules is when they and Music Magpie have the same product, in which case they tend to either go a penny above Music Magpie, or undercut them by a quid or more.  There isn't much more of a pattern to it, so far as I can tell.

As for their buying strategy, it's an interesting one.  £0.12 is their minimum (and their default for 66 of the 88 that they accepted). They'll go up to £1.00 or so for things that they're selling for £3.00 or more on Amazon (or simply don't have).  That accounts for all but five, which they'll give you between £1.77 to £4.39 (it's worth saying that this was the highest offer for any CD from any of the four companies I checked).  And, as with Media Magpie, check out anything for which they are prepared to part with more than £0.30, as it'll almost always be sellable on Amazon for ten times that or more.

Others

Ziffit and Zapper - although I can't explicitly identify their reseller identities on Amazon - fall into the - actually quite big - chasm between these two models and I'm pretty sure they're operating there somewhere under some name or other (OnlineMusicFilmsGames and Revival Books, for instance, are quite apposite-looking vendors, but there are numerous others).  Most listings have tens of sellers with the same names cropping up again and again; I would find it almost impossible to believe that these companies don't have selling identities on there somewhere.

For info, of the 74 CDs Ziffit were prepared to take, their prices varied from £0.13 to £2.50 (although it should be said that 68 of them were a quid or less, the beyond-a-quid stuff was very rare.

And Zapper (which accepted 91 - see 1/2) did give the best overall price for the 100 CD lot.  But to be honest, it's pennies.  Their offers go down to £0.03 (maybe lower but I've not seen any yet) and mainly stay below £1.00 (81 of the 91).  The reason their offer looks better is that they generally outdo the other reseller sites by a few pence here and there and it all mounts up, but as I mentioned, it's just pennies really.

Conclusion

Was there meant to be a conclusion?  I forget.  I know, I'll reproduce that table from the last page for the 100 representative CDs:

- Music Magpie would accept 100/100, minumum £0.05/CD, maximum £2.50/CD, total £32.67
- Ziffit would take 74/100, minumum £0.13/CD, maximum £2.50/CD, total £28.00
- Momox would accept 88/100, minumum £0.12/CD, maximum £4.39/CD, total 31.34
- Zapper would take 91/100, minumum £0.03/CD, maximum £3.57/CD, total £41.57

I've no intention - as I might have mentioned before - of selling any CDs, but if you are, there's a few things that stand out from the figures:

(1)  Make sure you know what you've got.  It's a pain in the arse comparing the sites, but it does expose interesting differences, most notably that there isn't a single site that gives a "best price".  As they will accept everything, it's worth using Music Magpie for this; they have a decent input system and will provide you with a ballpark figure for comparisons;

(2)  Once you've identified something vaguely worth something don't even consider selling to any of these resellers (or any other company that I've found).  If you can put in a few minutes effort, you can generally list it yourself on Amazon and get a far better price (see (4) and (5) below);

(3)  Inevitably, you'll be left a load of albums that are Amazon penny albums (generally with a large number of sellers, all selling at a penny).  These frankly aren't worth listing yourself (minimum £1.20 postage, minimum £0.07-ish for a padded envelope so - given a £0.01 selling price and mandatory £1.26 P&P - there's any potential profit wiped out, not to mention Amazon fees).  You could try dividing them into job lots and selling them that way, but watch the postage costs;

(4)  If the album's on sale (from Music Magpie or one of its alternatives) for more than about £0.50, it's probably worth listing it yourself, if you've the time.  Don't forget though, that Music Magpie will always undercut you by a penny, unless your copy is listed in better condition than theirs, in which case they'll probably go a few pennies more.  It all depends on your time and inclination, but assuming you get the price, you'll be making about 40-odd pence on each album doing it this way (and obviously more if you can get a higher price);

(5)  If all four companies are prepared to pay more than £1.00 for a CD, it almost certainly means that it's not in stock at any of the main players (I've only found a couple of minor exceptions so far), but you can generally sell them for well over a fiver each by listing yourself;

(6)  Shop around, these sites are in competition with one another.  For instance, Zapper was prepared to pay £1.25 for a CD that Music Magpie would only give £0.05 for.  For a different CD, Zapper would give £2.57, whereas the other three wouldn't go anywhere near a quid.  It does tend to be that Zapper will give the best price on the stuff that they'll actually take, but not always; there's no secret formula here that I can identify;

(7)  Almost certainly amongst the above group, you'll find yourself with something that is either listed as "out of stock" with all sellers, or is priced obscenely (£33.36, £47.34, etc.).  This seems to be a "name your price"-type situation, but unless you do genuinely have something rare to offer, it's price-gouging really.  For instance, I've got the album selling second-hand at £47.34 and could come swooping in as a new seller priced at £45.00, but I doubt anyone would buy it!  Sometimes I think that these must just be test listings and if the items were ever to sell, the vendor would have a bit of a problem...

If you really are short on time and simply want to clear out all your CD albums, I'd advise giving them to charity.  But if you really must realise some money for them Music Magpie is the one to go for, for the simple reason that they'll take the lot in one go with minimal hassle.  You will, however, get the overall worst price.  So if you are indeed hell-bent on getting shot of those CDs without having to list them yourself, at least shop around a bit.

Meanwhile, I've not finished with these companies yet, as I think there might be a chink in their armour that will allow the little guys to compete.  I'm pretty sure that - for the "high value" CDs at least - there's a potential method of playing the major sellers off against one another.  As the majority of their pricing is algorithmically-based, it should be a simple matter to undercut them all with a penny CD and watch them go from - to pluck a figure from the air - £5.50 straight down to £0.01 in order to price-match.  I would then withdraw my copy - providing it hadn't sold - and snap up all the penny copies for myself, then re-list them at a more sensible price.  It's a highly risky strategy - and borderline immoral - but I reckon I could pull it off.

Will let you know.

The Business Of Second Hand CDs (1/2)

I'm unsure an exact date can be defined - as I suppose it varied from person to person - but there came a point somewhere in between 2005 and 2010 that a lot of people wanted to get rid of their old CDs (presumably having ripped them first, but let's not go near the technical legalities of that whole issue) and, as a result, a whole bunch of companies sprang up, all offering to pay you for the privilege of taking them off your hands.

I don't really want to sell any CDs to be honest - I quite like having the physical things and it's not as though they take up too much space.  They can actually look quite pretty, with their colourful spines and all that, if you're into that sort of haphazard decoration type of thing:

But that's not important right now.

There's loads of these "we'll buy your CDs" companies out there, the biggest of which by far is Music Magpie.  They're certainly the only ones with a lot of TV advertising - which doesn't come cheap - and I'd be willing to bet they're the first one that pops into anyone's heads when thinking of offloading old CDs.  As far as I'm aware, they're also the only outfit that will guarantee you a price for any CD album - they don't do singles - but plenty of other places will buy from you, too.  They're generally slightly more selective, but may well offer a better price.

Generally these companies then re-sell what they buy on Amazon; Music Magpie are well-known for selling most of their second-hand stuff - irrespective of condition - at a penny each (plus the £1.26 that Amazon automatically applies as postage and packing for a CD).  Now interestingly - at the time of writing, 15th September 2016 - for sending a single CD, in a jewel case (and let's add a padded envelope to ensure that the thing is less likely to be damaged) the Royal Mail charge £1.20 for second-class post, or £1.27 for first class.

So what's the business model here?  As far as I know, all the major UK resellers send CDs out like this - i.e. complete with jewel case and all inlays, and in a proper padded envelope - and usually first class post.  There are of course methods of cutting the postage down to Letter rate - £0.55 second class, £0.64 first class - but that would either mean dispensing with the jewel case and/or inlays - and the big resellers don't do this.  They send out the whole thing, properly packaged, first class.  So how do they do it for a penny a CD?

(The short answer is:  they don't always charge a penny, and they get a substantial postage discount for volume postings.  But that's boring.  That's just to cover their run-of-the-mill stuff.  It's when they don't charge a penny that things start to get interesting).

Anyway, I thought I'd have a look, just to see what's out there, you understand; I've no intention of selling any CDs (unless some mad person wants to offer me a ridiculous price for something of course; I'm not daft).  But the more I got into it, the more interesting the various business models of these companies became and before I knew it, I had to do some sort of more rigorous exercise (to be honest I was hoping to be able to play one off against another, but this is only possible in very rare cases, so far as I can tell).

I chose 100 CD albums, pretty much at random, all in full size (i.e. full thickness) jewel cases and all in at least "Very Good" condition (going by Amazon's guidelines), to see if I could find some sort of correlation between the prices that various companies will give you and what they're trying to sell them at on Amazon.  I tried to choose some massive sellers and some stuff that I thought might be obscure, but I must stress that the choices weren't exactly scientific.

I started off checking out about eight or nine companies, but some quickly fell by the wayside, as they would accept so little stuff.  It ended up that just four were prepared to accept a reasonable number of the albums:  Music Magpie, Ziffit, Momox and Zapper.

Music Magpie would accept 100/100 at a combined £32.67 (let's call it 33p each)

Ziffit would only accept 74/100,  at a combined £28.00 (about 38p each)

Momox would accept 88/100, at a combined £31.34 (about 36p each)

Zapper would accept 91/100, at a combined £41.57 (about 45p each)

Taking the best offer from each company would get £56.57, incidentally (although this is doubtful anyway, Music Magpie in particular are notorious for making "deductions" based on their subjective appraisal of some items, and I'd be amazed if the others don't do similar).  But for the purposes of and all that, let's assume they'll pay up as promised.

(As an aside, I suspect had I chosen a different 100 albums, the general results might well have been different; from that, it looks as though Zapper is winning by a country mile, but with a different selection, who knows?).

But the thing considered as a whole is pretty meaningless, as it turns out that the real devil - and how these companies turn a better profit than I would initially think, even given their sending-in-bulk advantage - is in the detail.   It's a very strange market indeed.  A lot is obviously based on algorithms, but it does seem as though some of it isn't and is obviously being monitored by actual humans, some of whom react like lightning and some of whom don't seem to react at all.

To be continued etc....