Selling DVDs: MusicMagpie versus the competition

by John Fitzsimons on 16 January 2013  |  2 comments
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MusicMagpie is all over the TV, advertising the fact that it will pay for your old DVDs. However, there are plenty of other sites like Back2Cash, CEX and Trade Your Stuff that do the same. But who offers the best price?

Back in 2011, I did some research into how much cash I could raise selling some old DVDs to a website that was getting a lot of publicity: MusicMagpie. The title of the article says it all about how impressed I was: MusicMagpie: the worst way to sell DVDs?

Since that article, MusicMagpie's exposure has continued to grow, mainly thanks to a sustained advertising campaign. And rivals have also sprung up, including the likes of Back2Cash and Zapper.

So I thought it was time to give MusicMagpie another go and see if it is still the worst place to sell DVDs. I've only compared it to other online purchasing sites, rather than looking at the likes of Amazon and eBay, which we'll cover in a separate article shortly.

How MusicMagpie works

MusicMagpie allows you to cash in on your old CDs, DVDs and computer games. You enter the barcode from the DVD, CD or game’s box on the website, and it will give you a quote for how much cash MusicMagpie will give you for it. There’s also a mobile phone app which allows you to actually scan the barcode.

You then print off Freepost labels from the site (or book their free courier service), send off your items and you'll paid by bank transfer or cheque.

What MusicMagpie pays today

I entered the barcodes from 15 assorted DVDs, including some box sets, into MusicMagpie. Here's what I'd get for them.

That total from MusicMagpie is really pretty pathetic. Two of the biggest recent releases fetching less than £3.50 between them? In fact the total price across all 15 DVDs is only slightly more than what my mother-in-law paid for the Dark Knight Rises DVD alone!

Clearly, selling my old DVDs is not going to get me rich anytime soon. Given the guy on the MusicMagpie advert talks about getting a cheque for £50, clearly he is shifting an awful lot of DVDs.

Back2cash

For the list above Back2Cash says it will give me £18.08 for the 15 DVDs, the best part of £7 more than MusicMagpie.

CEX

Computer Exchange (CeX) has been around for 20 years, and has stores on the high street where you can buy, sell or exchange all sorts of tech products, such as mobile phones, DVDs, TVs and video games.

If you’re selling to CeX, there’s no minimum number of DVDs or values you need to hit. It offers a Freepost service, and has a team ready to establish exactly what it will pay for your goods once they arrive. You can choose how you get your money, whether it’s in the form of CeX vouchers, cheques, PayPal or a bank transfer.

So CEX will pay almost double what I could get from MusicMagpie for the same 15 DVDs, though this is significantly distorted by the prices it will be pay for Avengers Assemble and the Father Ted box set. In contrast it will actually pay less for a number of DVDs than MusicMagpie, such as Casino Royale, Along Came Polly and Meet the Fockers.

Zapper

When I originally looked into MusicMagpie, a reader suggested checking out Zapper instead.

The postal system is slightly different, as Zapper works with a firm called Collect+. Once you agree to the trade, you print off a shipping label and attach it to the box you wish to send your DVDs off in.

You then need to take the box to one of the 5,000 Collect+ affiliated local shops which offer the drop off service. Find your nearest Collect+ drop off point on this section of the Zapper site.

A fairly pathetic performance from Zapper, which only managed to make offers on five of the 15 DVDs. This was either because it did not recognise the barcode or could not accept any more copies of the DVD in question.

And for those it did manage to make an offer for, they were either the same or lower than the offers from MusicMagpie.

WebuyDVDs.co.uk

Another new site to consider is WebuyDVDs.co.uk. When you complete your trade, you can print your own ‘welcome pack’ or have it delivered. The pack contains the Freepost labels to post your DVDs.

The site talks a lot about how ‘recycling’ your old DVDs in this way is helping the environment, such as this quote below:

"Thousands of tonnes of Discs are being thrown away needlessly and we have created a goal to help people by give them a simple and fun way to help the environment and also give them cash for their unwanted DVDs, CDs and games, not to mention you get to de-clutter your homes."

Certainly a consistent performer, with offers for all of the DVDs bar Kung Fu Panda. Indeed, despite only making an offer for 14 of the 15 DVDs, its total offer came to more than £7.50 more than that of MusicMagpie.

Momox

Momox is another new site to take a look at, and one that is open about the fact that most of the items it buys it then sells on elsewhere.

Again a pre-paid sticker is provided so that you can send off your items free of charge.

So Momox is the worst of the sites we’ve looked at in terms of actually making an offer, only managing to offer me cash for four of the 15 DVDs. That said the prices offered are very competitive compared to the other sites I’ve looked at – indeed, it offers more for those four DVDs than MusicMagpie does for the entire lot!

Trade Your Stuff

The final site I’ve looked at is Trade Your Stuff, which again covers the cost of postage and buys all sorts of video games as well as DVDs.

Trade Your Stuff managed to make an offer for 13 of the 15 DVDs, and came up with a competitive offer of £17.83, the third highest of the sites I’ve looked at. Not bad.

Mix and match

So I’m not sure I can say MusicMagpie is the worst way to sell DVDs anymore – that honour now goes to Zapper. But it’s still a pretty rubbish return for your DVDs when you consider what you get elsewhere.

One thing is clear – if possible, mix and match where you sell them. By splitting the DVDs up and selling them to different companies, I could actually get a better return than selling them all to the same site.

What are your experiences of selling DVDs? Who do you feel offers the best prices? Let us know in the Comments section below.

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