Comments on: Valuable to Worthless

By: Happy and Full Sunday | Personal Finance Blog by Money Ning

Happy and Full Sunday | Personal Finance Blog by Money Ning — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:53:10 +0000

[...] Four Pillars explains that it’s not just cars that seriously decrease in value over time.� Check out his list of other items you should consider buying (or not buying). [...]

By: Mr. Cheap

Mr. Cheap — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:45:33 +0000

Jane: That’s definitely a better idea than tossing them in the trash!

By: Jane

Jane — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:46:27 +0000

Any books that you don’t sell can be donated to your local library. If they can’t use them, then they will try to sell the books.

By: Four Pillars

Four Pillars — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:03:26 +0000

Whenever we’ve had a yard sale, we always have lots of books and they are a tough sell indeed. I usually end up giving most of them away – and some end up in the garbage.

DVDs and CDs are excellent sellers but for $1 each!

Diamonds are a ripoff!

Mike

By: Weekly Roundup: Another Baby Edition at Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money

Weekly Roundup: Another Baby Edition at Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:51:55 +0000

[...] Four Pillars has a spot-on assessment that some goods are worthless when they leave the showroom. Yeah, Stacie’s diamond is “worth” thousands (that’s what they said when I [...]

By: Shevy

Shevy — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:01:38 +0000

Yeah, what *can* I do with 3 boxes of VHS tapes? I’m not talking about the season boxes of a TV series, but the stuff I taped off of TV on $2 tapes. I’m sorting out the ones I really do want to keep (like the shows that haven’t come out on DVD) but I hate the idea of sending the others to landfill.

By: Plamen

Plamen — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:43:51 +0000

I used to buy books (mainly business and IT) like crazy several years ago and I have to give them away 2 years ago when I decided to move to Canada. Now I�m much more frugal and prefer visiting the local library or buy at garage sales where I can have a deal for 50c to $2.

By: Mr. Cheap

Mr. Cheap — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:24:27 +0000

Guinness: Very cool that you managed to get a bit of cash for them. I wonder what would be the best way for most people to identify “gold mine” overlooked collectible books?

Gates: Too funny. They didn’t get their money’s worth for that ad! Good for you for bucking the diamond trend and getting gemstones that you guys liked for yourselves! A buddy of mine just proposed with a sapphire and I told him how impressed I was that he wasn’t a diamond sheep.

Matt: CDs and DVDs are another excellent example! How much longer until they’ll be like VHS tapes that you can’t give away?

mjw2005: Hmm, my parents have an old IBM XT that they’re convinced some museum will be interested in one day, maybe they should start looking for a collector now?

By: mjw2005

mjw2005 — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:30:31 +0000

Ok…with DVDs, CDs and books you are correct…generally worthless, maybe a buck to 5 bucks each if your lucky…

but with electronics…some are quite collectible, most of the big brand japan stuff is worthless after a couple of years, but some of the higher end niche brands have cult followings and command high prices for years…just check out ebay…also rare electronics such as Minidisc units and some turntables can command some decent prices…

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:54:22 +0000

Some people think that their CD and DVD collections are worth a lot of money because they paid a lot for them but the reality is if you try to sell your $25 DVD you’d be lucky to get $2 for it. I once tried selling a sealed DVD (I got it free and didn’t want to watch it) and I had to convince the guy to take it at all. In the end I got the same $2 as the remaining DVD that i was getting rid of. I don’t understand why people think these items have any value (that 200DVD library that cost you $4000+ is probably worth less than $400).

Another thing that people think retains some value is electronics (again I’m not sure why people have this false idea).