When is it time to sell your anime?
 

The other day I was on Amazon.com buying some stuff, and on a whim I decided to look up Hajime no Ippo (aka Fighting Spirit) to see if the second season ever came out on dvd. I bought the complete collection volume 1 and 2 a few years ago, since it's probably my all-time favorite anime, and thought it would be cool to own the second season as well. Sadly it wasn't available, but I was pretty shocked when I saw the sale price on the old collections. I believe I payed less than $20 per volume about 3 or 4 years ago, and now I see volume 2 listed on amazon for $199 used. I then checked ebay and see only one copy of volume 1 available and it's going for $250.

As much as I love the series, I'm not a serious collector, and it's hard for me to justify sitting on one complete set that is being valued at over $400 (I could buy so much more anime with that money!), especially when I still have all the old fansubs backed up on CD's and an external HD (and sadly the fansubs are superior in some ways). But at the same time, for some reason I feel really strange about the idea of selling it. Has anyone ever faced this dilemma? And it's one thing for people to list anime at such a high price, but does anyone actually pay that much for a series that could probably still be downloaded for free? Has anyone here actually sold their used anime for that much of a markup before?

I don't buy enough anime to sell.

Anyway, I suggest you sell it, unless you really like the look of Hajime no Ippo on your shelf. Investments as profitable as yours are hard to come across.

Weigh your sentimental values against the profit to determine your personal answer. I'm using a semi-cheap example, but I've got the first DVD of Hikaru no Go that was my first foray into physical anime collectibles that I wouldn't ever sell. I've got a few DVDs of Fullmetal Alchemist that I looked into soon after, and while those are still important to me, I could see myself selling it if the markup was that crazy.

If you're not a serious collector, then hey, why not? It sounds like it's going for a lot. However, you should also research and gauge just how valued these things are, since they'll probably continue to increase in value as the years go by. I mean, look at stuff like Nintendo World Championships that's worth tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars today. Keep rare suckers in good condition and you're sitting on a gold mine. Of course, that's only if you don't have sentimental attachments to said product. Don't ever sell out for something you truly value.

My perspective on collectibles is you're either all in or all out. I just don't see the point in one-off transactions.

If you're only ever going to sell one set of DVDs (or at least only one set in the next 10 years), then why sell at all? That money is likely to have no practical effect on your life over that time span.

If you're hard up enough where it does, than that's another story, though that probably speaks to larger issues than whether or not you should sell some DVDs.

If you're not a rabid collector/ebayer, then I think it's important to ask yourself what the price is on sentimentality. Sentimentality isn't for everyone, but if it is important to you, then prices on ebay or Amazon are meaningless.

Of course, I might simply not get it. I don't think I've ever sold a thing outside of big-money items like my previous cars. New-age hippies may say things do not define us (and a lot of claptrap about the evils of a material world), but I've found my possessions do define a large part of who I am. It's not that I horde things (I throw things out all the time), but I'm going to go ahead and sound possibly like a jerk and state it right out loud: I generally don't buy things with an intention to recoup my investment through a monetary refund.

On the flip side, if you are a rabid buy low, sell high type of collector/investor, who views all this as a mini-stock exchange/profit-making system, then you still probably shouldn't sell those DVDs unless you've got many other transactions going on, where the big picture profit has some real meaning and there's increased chances of profit via that infusion of cash, greater than that which comes from letting that item (and any others) sit and continue to accumulate value. You really don't come off as that type of person, though text can hide all sorts of things about a person.

These are, of course, just generalizations. I guess all I can really say is that only you can put a price on sentimentality, not amazon or ebay.

I'd just like to bring attention to the fact that asking price is not the same as value, worth, or in general what people will pay. I could put a DVD on ebay that no one else is selling for $900. Does that make it worth that? Not unless someone pays it.

Will you ever regret if you sell that collection of your's someday? Just an advice, to avoid that buy at least 3 copies of it.

One for reviewing, the second for safe keeping ad third for selling. No regrets there.

Sell my stuff?

What devil worshipping nonsense is this.

That's so funny!!!! You even misspelled it..

If I were to sell I'd be arrested... :heh:

What are you selling? Hentai?:heh:

Even if i sell it around here, nobody will buy it. :heh:


On a serious note:
Well, that depends on each of us. Someone will never ever sell his possesion unless in an extreme case. While someone will sell his posssesion if it makes a slight profit.

What i usually do is sit down and take a look at the thing i wanna sell. Do i want to keep it? The first yes / no flash in my mind will decide it.

But hell, $20 to $199 is one offer that even i tempted to make profit too... :heh:

No I didn't. No really, what are you talking about.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/worshipping[adjective]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense

Nah, forget it. It's my computer's dictionary is a mess again...:heh: Actually the first sentence was very funny. You're not serious about that, was it?

Of course I am.
Dare suggest I release my precious again, and I'll torch 'em with marshmallows over an open fire!
Then I'll post the result on the "Food you cook" thread. Damn satanic nipper nappers! :frustrated:


:p

Look, even Vexx sells his figurines. I sell my rares too, which includes a temperature sensitive Nagato. At your age, shouldn't you start selling yours too?

When you don't like them anymore. A lot of the anime and manga I've bought is money wasted in hindsight.

Of course I still have a bookshelf worth of stuff 'cause I like being able to go I support the industry!!1 or something like that.

I never buy a title at release. I wait years. I rewatch the title several times and make sure I like it long-term. Then when the price is affordable, I purchase.

I'm not buying them simply for collector value. I'm buying them because I genuinely enjoy the title for the long term, if not life. Plus I'd want those who aren't computer-only people to be able to see it too.

Well, if you want to sell your titles because of value, your call. It really depends on what you want to gain from keeping or selling.

I chose to enter this hobby for the long term. And I hope that when I reach Vexx's or SeijiSensei's age, I still am watching anime.

for me....NEVER, I want to hold onto all anime or manga I own so I can pass it on to my kids and hopefully they will embrace it & love it like I did, if they don't...their loss.

I've sold stuff and will continue to do so. Why hold onto certain series if I know I won't watch them again? I also trade my dvds too....I've gotten some good stuff that way.

With the exception of a few titles in my collection, all titles are fair game. You never know when an emergency will come up as it did for me years ago when I seriously needed the extra money.

Why?

I guess it does depend, as someone mentioned, on if you were collecting as an investment. But if you were just buying things you wanted to own, why sell them? What does age have to do with it?

I suppose that, at a certain point, if you keep on collecting, you'll have to figure out where to store the stuff, and it might get to be a pain... but that's not too difficult a problem. I suppose there's the issue of "what happens to all this stuff if you die"... but I guess you just plan for that like everything else.

There's nothing wrong with selling things if you want to, but by the same token I don't think there's anything wrong if you don't want to sell them. Each collector has their own reasons for buying things.