CDs for IPods?

Here’s an interesting proposal. An independent music store in Charleston, SC is offering to trade an iPod for your CDs. For 45 CDs you get a 512 MB iPod and for 175 CDs you get a 60 GB iPod. Granted, the CDs have to meet some pretty reasonable criteria, but this in a novel program that is sure to get some takers. In fact, if I were in Charleston, I’d grab some from my storage boxes and head on over to collect my iPod.

The math can get troublesome when you think about how much you paid for those CDs- 175 CDs at $13 a pop is $2,275. But that’s a sunk cost since you can’t sell them for what you paid. The real question is how much you could sell them for on eBay and whether it’s worth the time and effort of doing so. Sell 175 CDs on eBay for $3 a piece and that’s $525. You can get a 60 GB iPod for less than that, but to sell them you have to add them to eBay, administer the auction and ship them (that’s a hassle, but not a deduction, since the buyer pays the shipping on most eBay auctions).

So would I rather sell them or trade them? For an average price of $3, I’d trade them and avoid all the work of selling them. For say $6 (for a total of $1,050) I’d probably sell them (but honestly it’s a close call because it would be a royal pain to have to box and ship 175 CDs individually).

So my conclusion is that this is a pretty fair offer.

On a related note, I wonder how many people will delete the songs they have ripped from these CDs before trading them in?

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