We review which site is best for selling DVDs, books and CDs
Over the years I’ve accumulated hundreds of CDs, books and DVDs. Yet thanks to Spotify, Netflix and my Kindle they’re just gathering dust. So if you want to sell books, CDs or DVDs then trade-in apps may be your answer. We put the market favourites to the test to see if you’ll make pennies or pounds from your unwanted items.
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Sites to sell CDs, books, games and DVDs
I looked at three different companies which all promise to buy your unwanted physical media and also compared these to what you could potentially make on eBay and Amazon Seller.
The apps I used were:
- Music Magpie
- We buy books
- World of Books (known as Ziffit at the time of writing)
All three also work by entering details into a website if you don’t want to use a phone.
I also looked for others out there and it seems that MoMox and Zapper are not currently up and running.
How these buying sites work
- Just scan the barcode with your phone and instantly receive an offer (or not) for your media.
- Reach the minimum amount – one of the frustrations with some of these apps is you can’t trade in until you reach a minimum amount. This figure ranges from an achievable £5 through to £15, and when many items are offered to you for 10p, that’s quite a few to sell before you reach the threshold.
- Package and post – once you’ve accepted the figures for the trade, you need to box the titles up. Most allow you to drop the box off, though some will collect by courier. There isn’t usually a charge for this.
- Wait for payment – you only get paid once the items have been received and checked. With CDs, DVDs and games in particular this involves a condition check. If they aren’t of the desired quality you might get less cash, or even none at all.
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How the trade-in apps fared
Having just moved house, I was still clearing out as I unpacked boxes and found books, CDs, DVDs and sheet music books that I hadn’t touched in years. So I grabbed five of each and used the apps below to see just how much money I could make. You can sell computer games too but I didn’t have any to sell.
I’ve summarised the results in this table so you can see how Ziffit (now World of Books), Music Magpie and We Buy Books compared:
| Trading app | Amount offered (for 24 items) | Minimum payout | Extra incentives |
| We Buy Books | £3.92 | £15 | 10% extra with code APP10 |
| World of Books (was Ziffit) | £3.41 | £5 | 10% extra for new traders with code WELCOME10 |
| Music Magpie | £1.52 | £5 | 10% extra with code GET10EXTRA |
We Buy Books
We Buy Books accepted a few more items than the others (10 out of 20) but offered slightly lower individual prices. And the funny thing is, quite contrary to their name, they didn’t accept any of the five books I tried to sell! That said, I’ve used them to sell books before and had some success, mostly 10p offers but I did get a random £6 offer for a grown-up version of a Where’s Wally book!
I was disappointed this time with their offer prices for the sheet music books. Most offers were around 50p which I guess is better than the price they offer for most books, but the one I found could possibly sell for around £25 on Amazon, they only offered just 12p for!
Summary: OK for sheet music books and DVDs but didn’t accept any of my reading books. It would take quite a lot of products to get to the £15 minimum for payout, so not great if you only have a few items to sell.
World of Books (was Ziffit)
Ziffit, as they were known as at the time of research, were good for their offers on the sheet music books and DVDs but only offered 10p on one book and made zero offers on the CDS. In total, they made offers for 9 out of the 20 items with prices ranging from 10p to 50p, so nothing to shout about.
Summary: Good for sheet music, although don’t expect any offers higher than 50p. The £5 minimum payout is much more achievable and good if you have fewer items to sell. Not great for CDs or books in this particular case.
Music Magpie
Music Magpie would only take 7 out of 20 the items and the prices they offered were very low – in fact the best offer they gave was 40p for a Shawshank Redemption Blu Ray. They didn’t accept any of the books and offered just pennies for the sheet music books. They gave more offers for CDs than the other apps, but don’t expect anything big, the maximum was 22p.
Summary: Better than Ziffit and Music Magpie for CDs, but low prices across the board. £5 minimum payout is easier to achieve, so good if you’ve only a few items to get rid of.
Are these trade-in apps worth it?
From my test the answer is generally no. This kind of physical media just doesn’t hold its value, and with people also not really buying these items second hand, these websites don’t always offer a price which makes it worthwhile.
But you will get larger amounts for special editions, rare items, recent releases and textbooks, though you’ll probably get more for them on eBay.
And if you’re struggling for extra cash and don’t think you have the time to eBay your unwanted items, then these sites may just be the quick answer you’re looking for.
Featured deal
Customer rating
4.7/5
- Offerup to £300 in free shares*
- Annual fee£0
- Trading fee£0
- Minimum deposit£0
- FSCS Protected? Yes
- Transfer in existing ISA? Yes
- Interest on uninvested cash 3.75%
- Fractional shares No
- Flexible ISA Yes
- Foreign exchange fee 0.70%
- Fund fees If you invest in funds, you'll have to pay fund fees depending on the funds you choose
- Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority Yes: FRN 944492
- Risk warning Capital at risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up.
- Offer Invest a minimum of £300 and get up to £300 in free shares. T&Cs apply. Other fees may apply.
Are Amazon Seller and eBay better?
Since none of the buying apps came up trumps, I thought I’d compare their offers to what I could get elsewhere. CEX doesn’t buy books, but you can list these on eBay and Amazon (through Amazon Seller).
Obviously this is based on an estimate of what you could potentially make. For eBay, I looked at the same items and what price they are currently offered for. And for Amazon Seller, they give you the price after fees for the lowest price the item has sold at.
Other things to take into account are the photos, listing and packing for making Ebay sales, which all takes time and it would have to be done for individual items (although you could possibly sell in bulk). For Amazon Seller, if you go down the route of FBA (fulfilled by Amazon), then there are the storage fees to take into account if the products don’t sell.
And with both eBay and Amazon, there’s no definite sale. You could be holding on to the items for months or even years.
That could be an issue, unlike with the apps mentioned above where you have a definite income (once the products have been received and assessed).
How much could I make?
So what can I potentially make from Amazon Seller or eBay? Amazon Seller to me seems the best to go with but it requires some work. For the 20 products I’m planning to sell I could potentially make around £70 and on eBay about £60. But neither of these estimates are reality until the products sell.
Both estimates are a lot higher than the £3 odd offered by the buying apps above. The biggest difference in price I found between the trade-in apps and Amazon, was for a City of Angels music book. This was worth 43p on Ziffit and 12p on both We Buy Books and Music Magpie, yet Amazon predicts it could sell for £24.65.
That said, both Amazon Seller and eBay do require a lot more effort and man-hours than the trade-in sites, but I could make more money from them if my items go on to sell. But for convenience, the question is whether I should just take the £3.92 offered by We Buy Books!
