The Article
STUFF FOR SALE: THE TIME HAS COME
8th March 2024
When the day arrives that I have to retire and find a small cave to live in (just to the left of that waterfall, in the Yorkshire Dales, the one behind the fascinating limestone formation) I realise that I will probably have to downsize dramatically to enable myself, the wife and my Degritter, to fit into our new, bijou hovel.
To be honest? I don’t want to sell any of my hard-earned possessions but one must bite the bullet, stare reality in the face, realise that my final resting place will be a much smaller abode than I currently live within, know that I won’t have the storage space that I have now, set my jaw straight and get on with the job. Until I win the Lottery, that’s how it has to be.
Now I am not looking to retire for many years yet and I think it’s going to take me years and years to process and sell my items because I will be doing that slowly and carefully, I won’t be just dumping this stuff on the market. Even so, I have to start somewhere and I have to start now. I don’t want to be one of those guys who panics right at the end and throws the lot at a house-clearing cowboy firm for a fiver. I’d rather that this stuff go to someone who cares and all that.
As such, I plan to open an ongoing eBay shop, a Discogs shop and an Amazon shop which will display all of these items for sale to the public.
Which is where you come in. I’m not saying that I am about to offer the crown jewels here but there might be items of interest in amongst the dross (and there will be a right old mix, let me tell you). In different states of repair and condition too. Some of you might view the upcoming items as one step away from pure junk, other items might set you drooling. It depends on your interests and point of view, of course. There won’t be too much HiFi offered for sale because I’m still using most of it for work but there may be one or two items on offer, eventually.
What I intend to do is to list my items first on Patreon who will get the first bite of the cherry, as it were.
After the list has appeared there for a week, I will be placing the same items for viewing here on my website, also for a week. Other followers will be alerted to the website lists (i.e. my Facebook Group, etc). You can contact me direct here if you wish to purchase anything. I will state the price in the listings. We can talk P&P at the time of the enquiry. For prices, I will be using the going rate as a rough guide, adjusted in terms of rarity and condition. For vinyl? I’ll talk about that later.
After another week of website viewing? I will then be distributing the same items around Discogs, eBay and Amazon for general sale.
So you will have a certain amount of preferential viewing, you might say, then the public at large get a gander.
Items will appear when I can process them and in dribs and drabs. So I don’t think you should fear that For Sale items will clog these pages, posting every five minutes. I reckon that, at the most, you will see lists once a week. Maybe once every two weeks (maybe longer). Maybe as a single list, maybe in batches of two or more.
Hence, if I have a mix of items then the idea is I will group the items under the same genre. So if I have books, DVDs and vinyl to sell, for example, I will probably post three item lists on the same day entitled, FOR SALE – BOOKS, FOR SALE – VINYL and FOR SALE – DVDs with the relevant items for sale listed below. In that way, you can skip the genres that hold no interest and zero into those that do.
OFF TOPIC?
I would like to offer ‘off topic’ items in addition to HiFi and music related products. Reason? I’m hoping that your interests also extend beyond music and HiFi – as do my own – so there might be bits and bobs that may just appeal. What do I mean by off topic? I’m talking of a wide array of items. Books that might cover history, whodunnits, literature, etc. DVD movies and documentaries, rare computer magazines and fanzines, home computers (I used to be a computer games journalist), old computer games (ditto), comics (I used to collect these things as a kid), plastic kits (I used to be a journalist in that field too and also aviation) plus other oddities. Plus stuff I have forgotten about, frankly. Items I have kept for decades.
There’s a lot more to say on this subject and it’s early days yet but expect to see the first lists here in a week or so. The lists themselves are currently live now on Patreon.
I will be posting some Sales Notes here soon to set a few parameters plus offer a few guidelines and I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on those and also this post.
