On Amazon they have a service called Movies & TV trade In. I stumbled upon it the other day while looking for something on Amazon. The basic idea is that you round up your unwanted DVDs or Blu-ray discs and mail them in to Amazon for store credit. Amazon lists the simple steps of the process as :
1. Select Items, 2. Ship items FREE, 3. Get a Gift Card
I thought to myself that this might be an easy way to quickly sell some DVDs. But I wondered if you'd get a good price for your DVDs doing this.
As a test I chose to check the trade-in value of the Sopranos seasons 1-4. The trade in prices seemed OK to me. But I wondered if I could get more money by selling the items myself via Amazon Marketplace or on eBay. I decided to compare the Trade-In prices to what you could sell the DVD's for on the Amazon Marketplace or via an auction on eBay. For the Trade-in program the prices are fixed. For Amazon Marketplace I just used the lowest used price for the items. On eBay I did a search of current auctions showing the ones ending soonest then took the minimum price on the first page of results.
Amazon Trade in values:
Season 1 = $3.50, Season 2 = $6.75, Season 3 = $10.50, Season 4 = $6.00 for a Total = $26.75
Amazon Marketplace values:
Season 1 = $12.72, Season 2 = $16.89, Season 3 = $17.48, Season 4 = $20.98 for a Total = $68.07 [-$14 fees]
eBay prices.
Season 1 = $7.00, Season 2 = $10.00, Season 3 = $10.50, Season 4 = $19.50 for a Total =$47.00 [-$5 fees]
[edit: I originally forgot to account for the fees you have to pay on eBay and Amazon Marketplace. Roughly speaking from what I can tell the fees on the eBay sales would be 25¢ + 8.75% cost you around $5 and Amazon Marketplace would charge $1 + 15% for about $14]
You can make a lot more money selling the items yourself on eBay or Amazon Marketplace. Selling them yourself will take a bit more work and there is no guarantee they'll sell quickly. But if you're willing to do a little work and wait a week or two to sell things then you can make a lot more selling items individually on Amazon Marketplace.
Amazon Trade-in doesn't seem to be a bad service, it does what it is supposed to. But if you want to maximize the amount of money you get from DVD's then I wouldn't recommend it.