Is it time to turn your dust gathering DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDs, books and even electronics into cash? Did you know that there are lots of options available to you to do exactly this? And some may be more generous with their cash than others?
One area to look at is local to your home – how about a local market or a car boot fair?
Turning used DVD’s, books and CD’s into cashOr how about online solutions, of which there are many. It isn’t a case of necessarily using eBay, although of course that is an option.
Opting for online means you can either choose a solution for which you decide the price you want, using such as Preloved.co.uk, Gumtree or Facebook or you can opt for a ‘boot fair’ type site such as Shpock.
Alternatively there’s the auction approach, as ebay for example, albeit with ebay you can also set a ‘buy it now’ price.
Or with some online solutions, such as musicMagpie.com and Ziffit.com, it’s the provider of the service that determines the price they are willing to pay for your item. Invariably this will be lower than your expected price or indeed the price you feel you may be able to achieve through alternative routes, however, the key difference is that these services are willing to pay this price, it is you who has to decide whether to accept it.
At MoneyHighStreet.com we have taken a close look at the various online solutions, finding out what they cost to use, how easy they are to use, who’s buying what, how you can get paid and using a ‘basket’ of our own used items we’ve investigated just how much cash we can make.
We’ve taken a look at our local market too and even made an early start to visit a boot fair!
So, can you sell stuff for Cash?
It is absolutely clear there is a demand for your used items, you really can make cash from them and you can see the full details of our research and findings below.
A key question for you though is what is your main driver for selling your items? Is it how much cash you can get or is it more about decluttering your home? Is it important for your sale to happen quickly?
If you want to get your cash quickly, want to know how much you’re getting upfront and swiftly declutter your house, then online solutions such as Zapper.co.uk, musicMagpie.com and others we’ve looked at are well worth considering. The downside is the cash you get from these type of buyers will invariably be lower than other options.
Be careful who you choose too, as some of these buyers are more picky about the products they ultimately accept than others. In the main they won’t send the rejected items back either, meaning not only is your cash diminished because items have been rejected but also because you’ve effectively disposed of them for nothing.
The different buyers offer vastly different amounts for your used items. Some, such as Momox.co.uk, appear to have the same pricing each day, others, including Zapper and Ziffit, appear to vary prices day by day.
Taking all this into account, it is certainly worth ‘shopping’ around to get the best deal for your collection. Not all buy books either or will always take all the items you have. For example when doing the research, a couple of buyers were not interested in taking one of our CDs on one occasion.
Where you live can affect the usability you’ll find from some of the online services that have the option for local pickup. You’re likely to have more potential buyers in London for example than in North Devon. That said, you can help improve your success rate by making use of specific location selling Groups for example on Facebook.
If you want to declutter much more than the DVDs, CDs and books that we’ve checked out here, then online solutions such as ebay or Groups on Facebook can be very useful.
ebay is still very popular, it’s well recognised and trusted and used by many. If you’re happy to take a bit more of a risk, putting your items up for auction and hoping that bids are placed to seal your sale, it may certainly be worth trying.
And don’t dismiss offline solutions either. If you’re prepared to put some effort into finding a collection of items to sell then a car boot sale may well be worth doing.
Read on to find out all the details of our research and links to all the online sites we used. See just how easy it is to make cash from all those used items you have just gathering dust and taking up space.
Selling Used Items online
Buyers offering a set price for your secondhand items
Our research identified the following online services looking to offer you cash for you used items:
- Musicmagpie.com
- Ziffit.com
- Zapper.co.uk
- Momox.co.uk
- Computer Exchange (CeX) – Webuy.com
- WeBuyBooks.co.uk
What Services do these buyers offer?
A key differentiator with these buyers, is that they are just that, they are buyers who will buy your item, at a price that they determine. You know this price at the start of the process and with this knowledge you decide whether to sell them your item.
An alternative is to sell your item via eBay for example.
With eBay of course you have the option to enter an auction, whereby subject to a reserve price (which you have the option to include), your item hopefully attracts interested buyers and then sells to the highest bidder. Alternatively you can set the price by selecting the ‘Buy it Now’ option and hope that you get a buyer.
Or indeed via a site like Gumtree or Preloved.co.uk or Shpock. With these, as with eBay, you do not have a guaranteed buyer. You may of course achieve more for your item, not least perhaps because it is a more speculative transaction.
Looking at the providers we have listed above, we have considered each of them based on a consistent set of criteria:
- what they will buy
- how their service works
- how payment will be made
- what happens if items you send are rejected
- a summary of how people rate the service offered.
musicMagpie.co.uk – get CASH for your stuff.
What do they buy?
musicMagpie buys CDs, DVDs & Games, Blue-Rays and Electronics, including Mobile Phones, Games Consoles and Tablets.
How Does it Work?
Step 1 – Price – Get an instant price for your stuff. Either fill in the information about the item you want to sell or use the free musicMagpie app to scan your stuff using your phone’s camera.
Step 2 – Box – Put your stuff in a box (any box will do)
Step 3 – Send – Send your stuff by courier or by post. Either way the service is free.
Step 4 – Get paid – Payment made on the same day items received, by bank transfer, cheque or if you prefer you can donate to charity.
Minimum order value £5 and maximum 500 items per order.
It is important to note that if items are rejected by musicMagpie because they do meet their conditions, the items will not be paid for and will not be returned.
What do people think of the service?
Trustpilot – over 17,300 reviews, 8.9 out of 10.
Ziffit.com – Get cash for your stuff.
What do they buy?
Ziffit buys books, games, DVDs, Blu-Rays and CDs.
How Does it work?
Step 1 – Value – Enter your barcodes to get an instant price. A free Ziffit app is available to scan your items using your mobile phone.
Step 2 – Pack – Complete the trade, then pack your items
Step 3 – Send – Use free courier or drop-off service
Step 4 – Cash – Get paid to you bank, PayPal or by cheque or to the charity of your choice.
Minimum 10 items or £5 total item value.
What do people think of the service?
Trustpilot – over 3200 reviews, score 8.7 out of 10.
Zapper.co.uk – De-clutter your life!
What do they buy?
Zapper buys books, DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDs, games, LEGO ®, electronic devices including music players, tablets, games consoles and cameras.
How does it work?
Step 1 – Value – Select the type of item you want to sell (eg DVDs or mobile) and either enter the barcode or pick from the items in the list. A free Zapper app is available to help make this process even faster.
Step 2 – Send – Once you have finished adding items to your list, pack your items, attach a free shipping label and drop off at your local Collect+ point, of which there are some 5,000 nationwide.
Step 3 – Payment – Once processed payment will be sent via either PayPal or cheque.
If items are rejected they will not be returned.
What do people think of the service?
Trustpilot – Over 1000 reviews, score of 8.4 out of 10.
Computer Exchange (CeX) – webuy.com
What do they buy?
CeX buys DVDs, Blu-Rays, Games, Computers, Digital electronics, TVs and monitors and CDs.
How does it work?
Step 1 – Select your items to sell – if need be clean them, wipe any data. Search is via product name eg ‘Breaking Bad’. Mobile app not available.
Step 2 – Pack your items and send to CeX, at your cost.
Step 3 – Receive payment – target is to do this within a week of receipt of your stuff. Payment via PayPal, Bank transfer, cheque, CeX Voucher or Bitcoin.
No minimum order amount.
If items are rejected you can select either to have them returned to you for free or for them to be recycled.
What do people think of the service?
Trustpilot – Over 33,700 reviews, score of 8.2 out of 10.
WeBuyBooks.co.uk – turn your books into cash.
What do they buy?
The name is a little misleading as WeBuyBooks buy DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDS and Games, as well as books.
How Does it work?
Step 1 – Enter the ISBN/Barcode. A free mobile WeBuyBooks app is available to scan and save time.
Step 2 – Get valuation, our view on how much your item is worth.
Step 3 – Package your items. Print your free pre-paid label and attach it to your package.
Step 4 – Get paid. Post your items and once received funds will be paid into your account. Payment via Bank transfer, PayPal or Cheque.
Rejected items can be returned at your expense e.g. £1 for a DVD.
What do people think of the service?
Trustpilot – Over 2000 reviews, score of 8.9 out of 10.
How Much Cash will each of the services offer?
To understand more about the amount of cash we could get, we took a set of xx items to sell, a combination of DVDs (Box set, DVDs and Blu-Rays) Books and CDs and priced each of them up using the different services listed.
Our basket of used items, all in very good condition, consisted of:
DVDs
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
- Schindler’s List
- M.I. High – The Sinister Prime Minister and other adventures
DVD Box Sets
- Breaking Bad – Complete Seasons 1-3
- Wire in the Blood – Completely Wired
Blu-Ray
- Gravity
CDs
- SEAL – Seal
- Curtis Stigers
- Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
Books
- The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
- Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain
As you can see from the following tables, the results from our first set of valuations, are rather interesting:
DVD Box Sets
| Wire In The Blood | Breaking Bad 1-3 | |
|---|---|---|
| musicMagpie | £2.24 | £0.89 |
| Ziffit | £3.44 | £1.73 |
| Zapper | £3.59 | £1.29 |
| Computer Exchange | £4.00 | £3.00 |
| We Buy Books | £4.18 | £3.40 |
DVD’s
| Schindlers List | Gravity | M.I. High | Up | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| musicMagpie | £0.20 | £0.71 | £0.20 | £0.21 |
| Ziffit | £0.31 | £0.91 | £0.47 | £0.5 |
| Zapper | £0.25 | £0.25 | £0.26 | |
| Computer Exchange | £0.03 | £1.00 | £0.01 | £0.09 |
| We Buy Books | £1.00 | £0.25 | £0.31 |
CD’s
| Curtis Stigers | PInk Floyd | Seal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| musicMagpie | £0.15 | £0.89 | £0.30 |
| Ziffit | £0.19 | £0.82 | £0.19 |
| Zapper | £0.20 | £1.14 | £0.20 |
| Computer Exchange | £0.01 | £0.80 | £0.01 |
| We Buy Books | £0.05 | £1.30 |
Books
| The Miniaturist | Necessary Lies | |
|---|---|---|
| musicMagpie | £0.15 | £0.14 |
| Ziffit | £0.15 | |
| Zapper | £0.12 | £0.12 |
| Computer Exchange | ||
| We Buy Books | £0.01 | £0.01 |
Firstly splitting out the books from the DVDs and CDs, as not all buyers take books, the cash we could earn from the DVDs and CDs ranged from £2.66 from Momox.co.uk to £10.73 from Computer Exchange (CeX).
What a difference! A lot of this difference is driven by the fact that Momox appear to offer a standard price for what they buy eg 12p for a standard DVD. The others differntiate by title, presumably more closely matching their price to supply and demand.
Be aware too that some of the buyers change their prices offered on a day to day or perhaps week by week basis and so you may get a better deal on some days than others. Take a look at our table below which shows the prices offered over three days we checked.
| May 10 | May 17 | May 18 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| musicMagpie | £4.98 | £6.16 | £6.00 |
| Ziffit | £8.98 | £9.76 | £9.08 |
| Zapper | £7.60 | £8.63 | £7.43 |
| Computer Exchange | £12.03 | £10.73 | £10.73 |
| We Buy Books | £8.54 | £8.90 | £8.90 |
Books seem to attract very little cash, generally around the 10p to 20p level only. Unless you’ve got a lot of books to sell, it’s likely you’ll need to combine books with other category items in order to reach the mimimum thresholds set by some of the buyers.
Ebay
Ebay is of course well known as a vehicle to sell secondhand items.
On ebay, as a private seller, you can list 20 items free each month, thereafter there is a charge per item. There is a final value fee to pay, as well as a PayPal fee if the purchase is made via this route.
Your listing can be entered as an auction for a starting price and a period of time that you determine. You can set a reserve price.
If you want to add a ‘Buy it Now’ price you can do so for a fee.
At the time of writing, I checked to see how many people were selling ‘Breaking Bad – Complete Series 1-3’ and I was surprised to see a large number with a vast variation in price and postage costs. Clearly selling via ebay you may be tempted to set a higher asking price than perhaps you could earn on other sites where they determine the price they are willing to offer, but I do wonder if you will actually sell for this price with so much competition. Of course, the position will change depending on what you are selling and what market interest there is for buying your item.
Gumtree
Did you know that Gumtree is an ebay company? It’s a classified site, you add your item for sale, including a photo, location and set the price you want. To add the item you’ll need to register, most of the ads you place on Gumtree are free.
Trustpilot – very few reviews, however, a slight word of warning is that those that have placed a review, in the main are less than happy with the service. Issues have arisen over ads being taken down without advice, problems getting ads to appear in the first place and trouble getting into contact with customer services.
We cannot comment at this stage as we haven’t used the Gumtree service ourselves. We’ll look to follow this up though. Meantime has anyone reading this got any feedback on Gumtree, positive or negative?
Facebook can be a good route to sell your secondhand items and a growing number of people are turning to Groups set up on this Social Network to do just that.
These groups are generally either location driven (eg Buy and Sell in MyLocalTown or MyCounty) or product or subject area specific (eg Leica Camera).
These Groups tend to be ‘Closed’ which means you need to request to join them. Once approved you can sell your items for free, or indeed buy items from others.
For selling, all you need to do is consider the price you want and also the process of getting payment (eg Cash, PayPal or Bank Transfer) and delivery or collection of your sold item.
When moving house I successfully sold a large number of items, including books and DVDs, through Facebook Groups. For ease I used geographically local groups to ease the process, meaning I didn’t have to organise delivery and all items were paid for as cash.
Preloved.co.uk
In order to sell items, as a private seller, you can join under the Preloved Free membership scheme. With this you can sell your items free of charge, there are no insertion fee or selling fees.
Interestingly enough, checking the site at the time of writing, several people had ‘Breaking Bad – Complete Seasons 1-3’ for sale. These though were across the UK and many were collection only, making it more difficult.
Some were for sale in my local area but I do wonder how effective the site is as a number of the copies had been listed for 30 or more days at prices that were considerably higher than other sites, for example musicMagpie.
I think this may be worth revisiting for another MoneyHighStreet article – is the lure of a better price for your used item really worth it?
What do people think of Preloved.co.uk?
Trustpilot – Around 200 reviews, score of 9.1 out of 10.
Selling Used Items offline, local to your home
Local market
As well selling your secondhand items online, you can of course tackle the process in a non-technological way. Many local market stallholders or Pannier Market operators will be willing to pay you a small amount to take your items off you. In our experience, the amount they are willing to pay is similar to the lower end of the online buyers we’ve covered above. You may of course be lucky and be able to get more.
Boot Fair or Boot Sale
It might mean an early start, but filling up your car with all your secondhand items and heading off to a local car boot sale is a sure way of decluttering your house and making some well earned cash.
Most car boot sales tend to operate on a Sunday, although some do operate on other days, including Saturdays and even weekdays.
You’ll have to pay to get your pitch, around £6-7 for a standard car, around £10 or more for a small van or commercial vehicle. So you’ll need to make sure you have a good volume of stuff to sell to offset this cost.
If you can take lots of bags to put sold items in and have plenty of change to hand. Be prepared for people wanting to ‘do a deal’. Whatever you say the asking price is, most will then offer you less. Depending on likely you feel you’ll sell the item and how far you are into the boot sale, you may or may not want to accept a lover offer.
In the main, don’t have high expectations on the amount of money you’ll be able to get. My view on boot fairs is thatpretty much they are first and foremost a vehicle foe decluttering your house, for disposing of items that are still good quality but that you no longer want or need. As a by product almost you will make money.
Perhaps this cash though can be put towards buying a new item – for example we did our first boot sales so that we could be a top of the range Dyson Hoover, and I’m please to say we achieved our goal and have enough extra cash to celebrate with a meal out as well!
Conclusion
In conclusion, as I hope we’ve demonstrated, you really can declutter your house and sell your used items of DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDs and books for cash and with relative ease. No doubt you can sell a whole range of other used items too should you want to.
If you want to try and make more money, taking the time to sell your items online via such as Facebook Groups or ebay may be the best route to try. Be prepared though that it may take longer to get your cash through these routes. You also have to be prepared that noone wants to buy your items at the price you’re asking. You’ll have to either reduce the price or look for an alternative sales route.
Buyers offering a set price for your secondhand items will offer a seemingly low price but the key is that is the price they will pay. You can send off your items knowing that very quickly the cash will be with you and you will have a whole lot more space in your house – to fill again with all sorts of goodies!
Do not use Momox! They lure you into a false sense of security by offering you a better price for your used items than other similar companies. However they will then only pay a fraction of the agreed price, claiming that some items have not complied with their standard of condition or that they did not receive the full order. The items I sent were either new or nearly new and in full.