Goldmine, Part II

I previously discussed my decision to divest myself of various collectibles I've obtained over the years.

Yesterday I hit paydirt, selling 12 CDs for a considerable sum.

Most of the CDs in question come from a series of bootlegs (referred to as the Prism CDs) of Dream Theater material put together by a guy in Chandler from 1995-1998. He managed to get a recording studio to produce silver releases and he numbered them (he made 500 of each) for authenticity. At the time, even though I had only been a fan for only a couple of months, I jumped in, swayed by the hype over some of the material. Over the 4+ years, I got 7 of the 8 releases, listened to them and didn't really think about their value too much. Over the last couple of years I listened to them less and less, as my DT fandom diminished and the dubious recording quality made them less appealing.

I remember 5-6 years ago some of the releases demanded major coin, but I assumed that ship had sailed for the most part, with the prevalence of mp3s and the ease of CDRs. I listed them for sale at the price I paid for them ($25 each) or best offer and waited to see what the offers would be.

The first one was from Indonesia for $25 each. The second was from the UK for $200. Then a french guy offered $300 for 6 of them. So i turned down the first two offers and advanced with option 3. Then he made the savvy bargaining technique of dropping his offer by $100, but i negotiated him back up to $275.

At this time, however, there were a couple of eBay auctions going on, and one of the CDs in question sold for $160, so I reconsidered my position on trying to sell as quickly as possible. Auctions for these (and similar) CDs often are booted off eBay, but there seemed to be a window of opportunity to list them, so decided to try it out by listing one CD--the one that sold for $160.

After much consideration, I decided it wasn't completely inappropriate to inform the auction loser (second highest bidder) that the same item was again on the block and that the other Prism CDs would be listed soon as well.

Fortunately, he was receptive to my notice and was interested in most of the lot. He admitted some unfamiliarity with how much the Prism CDs went for, but he was interested in them all (except one that he had just won) and asked for a group price. I came up with a figure of $550 shipped for 6 of the Prism CDs and one other boot.

When I arrived at that figure, I wanted to write in the email "i feel goofy for saying that much for 7 CDs, but that seemed to be their approximate value," but Joanne criticized my namby pambiness and told me that would weaken my bargaining position.

My buyer responded by saying he was hoping for a little less (but didn't clarify). He also expressed interest in another CD based simply on the provision of a tracklist and hoped wasn't super expensive (these things are relative I guess). He gave me his phone number to close the deal. This was Thursday morning.

When we talked, he said he was thinking $500, but conceded he didn't know exactly how much the CDs were worth. At this point, we were dealing with a high enough figure that I just started throwing in extras to keep it at $550 shipped (2 other boots, and two promotional singles). He agreed.

Then I brough up the possiblity of using a non-paypal payment to avoid that charge. He understood my point, but said is wasn't worth his time to get a money order or anything like that, so he added $10 to cover that. Then he asked how much was "freight", even though everything i had said indicated the price included shipping. But he said "no, no. i'll pay for that", so another $10 to the tally.

End result, 12 CDs and 3 old fan club newsletters for $570 minus $32 in shipping and paypal charges. Not bad. And I still have 1 cd that can add $60-70 to the tally. This worked out better than the Star wars stuff, that 's for sure.