Of late I’ve entered Purge Mode. Having re-arranged my living/dining area to accomodate my glorious new B&W 803D speakers, I began casting a beady eye at the piles of orphaned items that have been accumulating over time. I am an incessant upgrader of audio, video, and computer tech, so older stuff tends to puddle in the spare room until there is little room for anything else. Should I have a houseguest, the poor schmuck might need to carve out a nest amidst the gizmos, gadgets, and tangles of power cords. Even the kitty’s litter box was starting to get hemmed in.
Out with it all, I decided, let Us clear a path through the wilderness and regain order in Our home. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to sorting, boxing, collecting, dusting, identifying, and organizing.
Occasionally I could be heard muttering “I don’t even remember buying this VCR” or “Oh where the hell is the remote for this thing?” But eventually I started recognizing what I had, where it was, and what I wanted to have no longer.
I’m a firm believer in Craigslist as an Ultimate Good, with Freecycle as a worthy backup for those tough-to-place items. Between the two resources you can generally get rid of anything, and if you don’t get too greedy about it all, you can probably earn at least a bit of your original purchase price back.
So far, over the past two some-odd weeks, I’ve managed to sell or give away:
- A barely-used HP 17″ laptop
- One pair of Boston Acoustics bookshelf speakers
- One pair of Rogers LS7t speakers
- One pair of OK-quality speaker stands
- A Klipsch powered subwoofer
- A pair of Grado RS1 headphones
- An Apple TV
- A Yamaha home theater receiver
- A large, heavy 38″ coffee table
- A small, light Sony dual-cassette deck
- A Panasonic VCR
- Another Panasonic VCR
- A Samsung Blu-Ray player
- An ancient FM stereo tuner from the 1970s
- Two large boxes filled with movies on commercial VHS tapes
At the moment I’m having some trouble moving a 1980s-vintage Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a few odds and ends such as a pair of Bose QuietComfort headphones and a serviceable-but-cheap USB microphone for a computer. But of those only the Britannica is of concern, given its bulk.
The trick to selling on Craigslist is to decide precisely what it is that you want to do. If your goal is to extract maximum cash out of the item, then persistence will be required. But if your primary motivation is to move something out of the house, one exceedingly simple guideline will suffice:
Offer it cheap.
That’s how I pushed the HP laptop out the door as fast as I did—45 minutes from posting to guy on doorstep with cash in hand. I estimated the most likely resale price, then cut it down dramatically. The result was a flood of offers. I told the first guy he had to come get it right now or I was going to sell it to somebody else.
Some might say that I’m cheating myself by selling low. But I don’t agree. My take is simpler and reflects a fundamental childishness concerning financial matters. So be it: I’m a musician and an artist. I’m supposed to be an idiot about money.
Here’s how I see it:
- Leave the item in the spare bedroom: no profit
- Sell the item to somebody: profit
So all I have to do is sell the silly thing, and I’m ahead. (And don’t bother me about the original purchase price, depreciation, value for the dollar, etc. All that stuff bores me and, more significantly, lets a snake loose into my fool’s paradise.)
Now I hasten to add that I’m not utterly stupid about my asking prices. Somewhat stupid, yes, but not brain-dead. I knew full well that I could ask a stiff price for the Grado RS1 headphones, for example, given that those are high-level audiophile items that would be of interest only to a discriminating person. (And they sold within a few hours.) I also knew that I could get a respectable price for the Apple TV, the Blu-Ray player, and the Rogers speakers.
But for other items, I priced to move. Today there is a young lady here in San Francisco who owns a much finer coffee table than she could have afforded new, and I got the monstrous thing out of the spare bedroom. We’re both happy, so I really don’t care that I let it go for the merest pittance, a fraction of its actual resale value.
And for some other items (the VCR, cassette deck, FM tuner), I knew that Freecycle was the only way to go; nobody was going to pay me a dime for those things.
In addition to lightening ship, I’ve met some interesting people and had some very nice conversations.
But I still can’t get rid of the encyclopaedia, even after offering it for free. Drat!