Murdoch wrote: Wed Oct 15, 2025 12:19 am
My dream is to wittle my collection down to the bare, rewatchable essentials. The problem is figuring out what those essentials are
I did this last month. Now I'm just down to 880 releases
I've thought about setting a hard limit of 500 with a policy of one in, one out. Maybe if I ever have to move. It's much easier for me to get rid of books. As I've aged I've become more realistic about my limitations of attention span and font size readability.
Beloved Aunt wrote: Wed Oct 15, 2025 1:00 am
I had assumed it was, like, a canal or something
I'm sure she'd be happy to dump everything in a canal, but we don't have one conveniently near to us and the chances of her being caught and fined are probably too great.
Murdoch wrote: Wed Oct 15, 2025 12:19 am
It's fun rereading the beginning of this thread to see how little has changed in collector mentality. However, we're definitely in a different world when it comes to film availability. Whereas then you could satisfy watching the latest DVD through a mail order Netflix subscription, now streaming services' content is extremely restricted by region and often focused on original content (not to mention the dips in quality that come in streaming based on internet speed).
My dream is to wittle my collection down to the bare, rewatchable essentials. The problem is figuring out what those essentials are when I'm at the moment in my 30s and will ideally be revisiting these discs in later decades with the inevitable differences in taste that comes with age.
In 2011, in a very misguided moment, I sold over 100 CDs. Mostly indie rock CDs from my high school days that I rarely played. In truth these were CDs I didn't even play that much upon release. Stuff like The Microphones, The Unicorns, Clearlake, Ted Leo, etc. Nothing extraordinarily rare of irreplaceable, but a lot of music that definitely represented my high school self.
That fear almost always lingers in the back of my head when selling stuff. And right now I'm in a position where I need neither the money nor the space, so I'm willing to hold on to stuff.
Speaking of binning things, my partner dumped all of his collectable import CDs in the bin before I could talk him out of it, and almost immediately regretted it. A few years later, he started quietly collecting some of them again.
FWIW, I've been donating a lot of non-valuable stuff to Housing Works before the tax code changes next year and non-cash deductions take a major hit. (That's from the monstrously shitty tax bill the GOP passed earlier this year.) Again none of it's collectible or unusually valuable, so listing them on eBay or Discogs, waiting for a buyer, then dealing with the hassle of packing and shipping each one isn't worth the time and effort. I'd rather dump huge loads of them and get the space freed up, help a great cause and give someone out there a good, inexpensive find.
hearthesilence wrote: Wed Oct 15, 2025 11:14 pm
listing them on eBay or Discogs, waiting for a buyer, then dealing with the hassle of packing and shipping each one isn't worth the time and effort
This is the main reason I've mainly kept my collection intact—it's more of a hassle to get rid of anything than it is to just keep it (unless I'm running out of room, which I am).
I rarely sell titles for less than €10, and I have kept the envelopes that many of my Blu-ray purchases arrived in. I print the address label and postage on sale, then drop it off at the DHL store across the street, so it never seemed that much of a hassle to me. When Blu-ray became the new format, I sold most of my DVDs, for which there was still a demand at the time, and made around €2,000, which I reinvested in the new media format. I've never earned that much money, so being thrifty has always been a way of life for me.
I don't find Discogs a hassle at all. A lot of the stuff doesn't go for much, but it's more about finding it a new home, and the money that does accumulate is a handy little fund for new things I want. When I decided to downsize I spent a couple of days listing everything, and that was the hard part done. More than half of it is gone at this stage. My packaging is down to a T, takes me five or ten minutes to do a better job than most pro retailers, it feels good to get appreciation for it, a lot better than how it feels to throw the stuff out.
There's a record store near me that also sells blu-rays/DVDs. I figure when I have a big lot of stuff to get rid of that's of minimal individual value per title, I'll just haul it over there. That's what I used to do when there was an FYE near me with a substantial used section. It's obviously bought up for pennies on the dollar, but that blu-ray of Pulp Fiction or LA Confidential is not going up in value.
Gregory wrote: Thu Oct 16, 2025 3:18 pm
I'm puzzled by the mention of selling movies on Discogs—maybe I misunderstood?
Discogs does cover DVD's and Blu-rays of concert films and select music documentaries, but otherwise, as LastMinit already mentioned, I brought them up because it's relevant to the idea of collecting physical media in general.
Selling stuff from eBay can be easy, but at the moment the nearest post office is a pain in the ass to get to (basically a long walk) and while there are mailboxes around the area, we've had a big problem with people breaking into them and stealing all the mail. It's really insane, I never knew that would be worthwhile to do until I moved to the city, and it's gotten a lot worse in recent years. (One time I was at the post office, someone ran in and told the clerks that someone just tried to steal mail through one of their slots using some kind of long, sticky thingie and they were like "yeah, we know.")
I wish there was an equivalent of Discogs for movies, and one for books too. It makes a difference having a common collector's appreciation among the user base. But books are weighty, and make the cost of shipping prohibitive, and for movies there's too much doubt about the market. I'm lucky enough to have stores in my city where I can trade books and movies for credit (the book one was hard to find, after lockdown everyone seemed to do a massive clear out and even charity shops were no longer taking them). And in one sense it's nice that store-browsing is more of thing again, at least where I live, given the problematic rise in postage costs and customs charges.
