Thanks, GS Army. A number of you weighed in on how much you'd pay for books, DVD's and such....and we're well on our way to composing the Chicago Garage Sale Price Index.
When we've worked our way through it, the index will be a list of common items at garage and yard sales, and what Chicago buyers are willing to pay for them. Mind you, it's not designed to be a list of recommended prices that sellers should automatically assign to their items. That's up to the individual and item.
But, like in real estate, the data is in the selling price, not the asking price. Not being a realtor or an economist, I enlisted the aid of dictionary.com for a black-and-white definition of price index:
A price index is a normalized average of prices for a given class of goods or commodities in a given region, during a given interval of time.
Last week, I asked you to chime in with what you'd pay for used media you typically find at sales---books, DVD's et al. This was an easy category to start with, since the numbers you sent in closely matched each other.
So for ther first category, Media, here's the going price list:
Books
Paperbacks: $ .50
Hardcover: $ 1.00
Kids: $ .50
Movies
DVD: $ 2- $3
VHS: $ .50Music
DVD: $ 2.00
Albums: $ 1.00Software CDs: $1 - $20 depending on how current or compatible
Look good to you? Because like everything else, the prices for the second hand market can fluctuate with conditions. Two that I can think of offhand are seasonality (Christmas CD's in July?) and demand (shock-- Brittney's comeback fizzles and her CD's flood the used market). You can agree or disagree, too, depending on what you see out there in the field.
Today....books. Tomorrow....old jeans and sweats. Can it get more glamorous? Tomorrow, I'll ask you to do a little more work and send in your thoughts on how much dough you're willing to part with for used and vintage clothing.
Filed under: Pricing guide
Tags: @featured, book and album prices, Chicago Garage Sale Price Index, used dvd
