As classic toys and games are all the rage, are you sitting on a goldmine? Perhaps you have your children’s abandoned old toys sitting in your loft? Is it time to boost your bank balance by selling them, by getting into ‘retrocycling’, recycling old toys?
Make money recycling old toys
It’s a well known fact that many parents end up looking after their children’s possessions after they move out – they’re no longer at home and yet cupboard and loft space are taken up with their ‘precious’ items.
The value of these items can add up and can often sit, almost forgotten and untouched for 20 years or more.
But are you aware of the value of all these old toys?
What appears to be junk in your loft may well be worth a fortune, or at least more than you think.
The Toy Retailers’ Association highlighted that the Christmas 2015 top 12 toys was going to be a vintage year with strong entertainment brands like Frozen intertwined with evergreen favourites such as LEGO.
LEGO for example featured City Deep Sea Exploration Vessel and Star Wars Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle. Both of these have a retail price of approaching £80.
So if you want to buy them or other expensive new toys, maybe it is time to sell old toys to make money to do so?
What about selling older LEGO sets?
Some LEGO items have become valuable collectors’ items and whilst you may want to keep storing them in the loft it may be that they could generate some extra cash for you.
According to an article in the Mirror, some old LEGO sets are selling for thousands.
Many people decide to sell their LEGO on ebay.
There are also specialist sites such as Bricklink.com and Brickpicker.com that you can use if you have hgh quality, complete sets.
LEGO sets based on Star Wars and Harry Potter themes all generally sell well.
If you have a box of LEGO, rather than individual sets, you can also sell on websites such as Zapper.
Make money recycling LEGO
You may be familiar with sites such as musicMagpie and Ziffit which offer instant valuations on such as DVDs, CDs, books and various electronic items and help you to sell items for cash.
Zapper covers these items but it also offers a cash trade-in service for bulk LEGO.
You put your LEGO in a plastic bag, weigh it, select the nearest weight from the Zapper website menu and select a free delivery method. Once received and checked, Zapper will post you a cheque for your goods.
Zapper offers a set price based on the weight of your LEGO. For example if your LEGO weighs 1Kg you will get £3.50. Only genuine LEGO can be included and it must be in good conditon.
Recycling consoles and games
If you’ve some retro consoles, perhaps Atari or Sega for example, you may want to trade via specialist sites to ensure you get a fair valuation for your products. You can of course use ebay or other sites such as Gumtree and Preloved.
Go to a boot fair or boot sale
You can sell your old toys and games ‘offline’ as well as ‘online and use the cash earned to recycle your toys, allowing you to buy new ones, perhaps secondhand at that.
Offline, how about going to a boot fair or boot sale?
It might mean an early start, but filling up your car with all your secondhand toys and heading off to a local car boot sale is a sure way of making some cash.
This route though is more about volume being sold than value per sale. Most people at boot sales are looking for very cheap bargains and so it’s not the ideal place to go if you’re trying to get top price for your valuable toy. It is though a great place to go if you’ve lots of low value toys to recycle.
Give your toys away
Give old toys away
Of course, whilst we’ve been discussing opportunities to make money, if you actually don’t need to, you could always give your old toys away for free.
Your local charity shop will invariably be keen to get your donations, or you can try a website such as Freecycle.
Diane Ray, MoneyHighStreet comments: “With so many people currently trying to find ways to save money, here is a great way to try and make money as an alternative approach.
And getting rid of stuff means you’ll potentially free up some space in your cupboards and lofts too!
“Looking through your loft or dusty cupboards, you may of course find things that are of sentimental value or perhaps are family heirlooms and you may want to hang on to these.
“Whilst checking your house and unearthing items you haven’t seen for sometime, perhaps have even forgotten about, make sure you think about their value.
“Often people hoard or inherit items but don’t consider their value.
“Understanding the value of your house contents needs to be done not least to ensure you have an adequate level of home insurance in place.
“Make sure that the value of any of your contents doesn’t exceed the individual item limit on your home insurance or collectively that your contents don’t exceed the value of cover you have.
“If you are in any doubt it could be well worth your while talking to an insurance broker to get their advice -to help you can get free advice from our insurance partner brokers, Baxters.”
