Sell your record collection

A collection is a pile of individual records

A record collection is heavy, and it is rarely one kind of record. There will be everyday albums, records you played to death, and a few you have never looked at closely. Selling the collection means deciding, record by record, what you are willing to part with. Vinyl Buyback shows an offer for each release you look up, from the barcode or the catalogue number. The basket is just those records added together.

You do the looking-up. You keep the records you still want. A house move, a loft and an inherited shelf can all start the same way: a table, the sleeves, and the scanner on the homepage.

A practical order of work

Give yourself a clear surface and enough room to put records back in their sleeves. Keep each disc with its own jacket. If two copies of the same album are in the pile, keep them apart: they may be different pressings, and the offer follows the number on that copy. How much your records are worth explains catalogue numbers, barcodes and pressings.

Work in two passes. First, the sleeves with a barcode on the back. Scan the bars, or type the digits if the sleeve is creased or reflective. Second, the sleeves with no barcode. Read the catalogue number on the spine. If the spine is rubbed away, look at the centre label and the back cover, and type the number as it is printed.

Alphabetical order is optional, and you can start before you have any idea of a price. The number on the sleeve is enough to ask for an offer. Titles you have never heard of can be looked up the same way as the famous ones. Ordinary-looking albums are worth checking too, because the title on the cover is a weak guide to which release is inside.

Sell LPs, and smaller vinyl

An LP is a 12-inch album, usually played at 33⅓ rpm, and that is what most UK collections are built from. The catalogue number is often the quickest thing to read: it sits on the spine in a short run of letters and numbers. Start there when you want to sell LPs from a long shelf.

Smaller vinyl, such as a 7-inch single, can be looked up in the same box if it has a barcode or a catalogue number. This guide stays with LPs because they are the bulk of a collection and the bulk of the packing.

One parcel, and the records you keep

People who want to sell their vinyl collection in one go can work along the shelf in batches, then send one parcel. People who want to keep a core of favourites can leave those on the shelf and only add the rest. Both are the same checker.

When the basket is the set of records you actually want to sell, read how it works for sending them and for getting paid, and the terms for the rules. The grading guide is worth ten minutes before you pack a loft find: condition is checked when the records arrive, and a number on a sleeve cannot see how a record plays.

Selling to one buyer is a different job from listing every LP yourself. Where to sell vinyl sets out record shops, eBay, Discogs, Vinted and buyback sites, so you can choose with the size of the collection in mind. A short account of the service for a few records is on sell vinyl records online.