Or for slightly more income, you could melt them down for glue · 2:34pm Jul 22nd, 2014
In days of yore -- about two years ago -- I was a moderate devotee of Amazon's Blu-Ray DVD trade-in store. Every so often, my local libraries would hold We Have Too Much Crap On Our Shelves sales which, inevitably, would degenerate on the last day into Everything You Can Stuff Into This Here Bag, One Dollar. I would typically use that last day to not only pick up stuff I wanted to read, but also hit the movie shelf with everything I could reasonably stuff without any electrons sharing orbits. I'd watch what I wanted to, consider eBaying one or two, and mostly just trade the rest to Amazon's secondary sellers for a little bit of Amazon gift card credit -- typically a few times that initial dollar. Several movie nights and a modest profit. Fine.
Except that... well... the program seems to have degenerated at the same rate as those library clearances.
Let's take the DVD set of MLP:FIM Season #1 for our example. Maybe you got an extra and can't be bothered to work with eBay's triple-hit on fees any more. Maybe you just went digital and all your friends have their own copies. The library has recently been picketed by People Against Ponies. You can't hold a yard sale, mostly due to lack of yard. So you check the trade-in rate on Amazon.
Currently, there are no used copies up: cheapest new set is $25.49. Let's reasonably extrapolate here and say you kept your season set in like-new condition, but it's been opened and played. If someone was selling that on Amazon, you'd probably say... around $17.50, right? But you can't be bothered to sell it yourself: we established that. So how much trade-in credit would you reasonably expect?
Here's what you get: eleven cents.
But that's because you opened the set. If you left it sealed? You get one. whole. dollar.
I did some browsing. Many trade-in credits are less than one percent of what people are selling the results for. The most frequent price I encountered was two cents. If a title is truly rare and retails for several hundred dollars? You might get twenty bucks for it, but most of the time, you'd be lucky to see twelve. My personal movie & TV library -- which is around a couple of hundred titles -- well, I didn't do the complete math work because I just didn't feel like depressing myself to that degree, but I think I'd see four digits on a full let-go, with two of them to the right of the decimal point.
This is not the digital market intruding. One of the most annoying features of downloads? They're forever. You get the license to own and play. It can't be passed on, transferred, or resold. Tired of that title? Too bad: it's still yours, and you legally cannot pile the 0s and 1s on your yard sale table. Or physically. The resale value on purely electronic media is called 'Sell the device containing it'. And even then, States license contracts might get offended. Pass-alongs have to be physical.
(Side note: what's also annoying to me here is that you can't loan out a download: only the device containing it. Makes it a lot harder to spread certain joys.)
For some reason, the Amazon trade-in market has either crashed or became a sucker bet on a level Flim & Flam couldn't get most ponies to fall for. Two cents has become the reasonable expectation, forty dollars if you're swapping the Blu-Ray Mona Lisa. But if you're a secondary seller, you'll still try to get five dollars for some of those two-cent titles... which are available at better yard sales for a buck each. Or library clearances.
I used to use it because it got me roughly as much money as I would have fetched through eBay, saved me the postage/feedback hassles, and the resulting windfall would have been put on Amazon anyway. I might have gotten an extra dollar the slow way, but the convenience made up for it.
No more. R.I.P, Amazon Movie Trade-In program. Sorry, but despite popular opinion, I'm just not at that level of stupid. For all intents and purposes, I might as well stand on a street corner and hand out free movies to random passersby. (I'm fairly certain this is illegal in North Carolina.) I would definitely get some traffic that way. Also propositions. Possibly fights. But just for making an interesting afternoon, it beats two cents on the title.
Incidentally, the secondary sellers also take trade-ins on preorder items. You know. Just in case someone got a screener copy. And one-fourth of full advance retail is just so fair...
Really? Down here in Texas, it might raise a couple of eyebrows, but unless someone suspected you were dispersing stolen or illegal merchandise, I don't think law enforcement would much care one way or the other as long as you weren't impeding traffic, interfering with someone else's business, or acting like Applebloom that time she tried to help sell apples.
(Ah thought we agreed not t' talk about that...)
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More of a running joke than anything else in that if you say a given activity is illegal in a certain state, someone might believe it. The two Norths are strong candidates for getting away with a proposed ridiculous statute.
On the other hand, passing out pony DVDs in certain parts of North Carolina might not be the best idea to begin with. They might be more into limbless produce products in pirate hats.
Libraries, thrift shops, and the bargain vinyl bin at record stores are pretty much where I buy all my music now a days.
And I'm so so sorry you live in North Carolina.
Have a great day!
Might as well drag me to Half Price Books then. I'm pretty sure y'all have those in NC. It's basically the same as amazon movie trade, but you don't have to ship anything ;)
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I'd better clear this up now: I do not live in North Carolina. I would not have survived past the age of four. And I might have taken a few people with me.
(Among other things) Duke.
2306518 ... Then why mention whether it's legal in North Carolina?
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Because everything's illegal in North Carolina.
Except (blue) devil worship, which is mandatory.
2306812 I was going to disagree with you, but I checked their fireworks laws. Basically, if it makes noise, no. And then there is Duke, land of the outrageous prosecution. Really kind of stunning, considering how open South Carolina is, from fireworks to labor laws. (which explains why SC's unemployment rate is a full percentage point lower than NC, but I digress)
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One state closer to my goal of successfully stalking Estee.
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And as we know, Duke Sucks.
Yeah, I find that's the best way to dispose of--oh, wait. You mean DVDs.
Hah. If only. I bought an e-book and a movie less than 2 years ago that I can't use anymore, because I've maxed out the number of devices I can put them on without ever putting them on more than one device. Every time you re-install the OS or give your computer a major upgrade, it may count as a new device! Every time you break the screen of your e-reader, or the thing just dies, and you get a new one, it's a new device! That happens once a year for me.
The MLP comics won't even download onto that one device. I have to read them online. No internet, no comics.
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What platform did you buy them from? I've only ever had that problem once (with a game that I bought from the developer...I paid an extra $4 to get I think one year of being able to download it, and of course when I needed to redownload I was about a month out of the extended download period).
2309601 One was iTunes. I think the other was Google Play.
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I think you just about single-handedly talked me out of purchasing Season #4 on the Kindle. I've been debating it for a while -- pros: great picture, no more wait time, can take it on the go easily / cons: can't loan anything out, have to be in range of signal or have data left, no commentary tracks. But I think Amazon digital purchases do have a device limit. As long as I'm willing to hang onto a player and keep the discs clean, they'll still be playing down the road. Digital? Upgrade once and I might have to buy it all over again. It's not that i mind keeping an old device around to retain that part of a collection, but if it breaks...
I knew this was a racket.
Piracy is forever.
2309689 oh god i love that comic
and yes, all the yes