Baggage Handling

I grew up in a place where you knew where the city dump was, there was always a friend or neighbor with a truck they were willing to lend, and holding a garage sale was as simple as placing a classified ad on the back of the 12- to 20-page local newspaper. I grew up in a time when VHS was the wave of the future and people listened to music albums whole, as artists intended.

As my husband and I prepare for our 1,500-mile trek back home, the good old days taunt us.

Where did all these CDs, videotapes, DVDs and books come from? And, more important, what the heck are we going to do with them all? Certainly not move them.

We toyed with the idea of a yard sale, the only problem being that we don't have a yard -- or a garage. As apartment dwellers in a metropolitan area containing more than 17 million residents, our options seem limited.

A couple of kind homeowner friends offered the use of their real estate, but that would involve yet another moving truck and a lot more organizing than we care to do on top of the load we're already coping with.

Over the weekend, I started poking around on the Internet for other options. Craigslist and eBay seemed like too much hassle. We wanted a simple exchange of cash for goods, and we wanted to deal with it all in one fell swoop.

I should mention here that under normal circumstances we might just donate anything we didn't want. But with unemployment on the near horizon, we can't pass up the opportunity to make a quick buck. And the less we have to truck through Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska in the dead of winter, the better.

We Googled "Disc Go Round," the name of a secondhand music store we once knew about in a neighboring suburb. It was no more, but that's when we stumbled upon a site called SecondSpin. Bingo!

We spent much of Saturday entering UPC codes and boxing up our CDs: one collection of keepers, one collection of sellers, and one collection to give away (or burn, so that no one may ever question our taste).

When all was said and done, we'd racked up $71.15 for the 99 items in our "sell" cart. Not bad for an afternoon's work. Most items sold for either a dime or a dollar, but there were exceptions. Here are a few examples (judge not the titles, lest ye be judged):

Various Artists ~ Dr. Demento 30th Anniversary Collection: Dementia 2000
CD Credit - Price: ($8.75)

Original Soundtrack ~ Leap of Faith
CD Credit - Price: ($4.00)

Creedence Clearwater Revival ~ Chronicle, Vol. 1
CD Credit - Price: ($3.00)

Simon & Garfunkel ~ Greatest Hits
CD Credit - Price: ($2.00)

Marilyn Manson ~ Antichrist Superstar
CD Credit - Price: ($2.00)

Original Soundtrack ~ Forrest Gump [Original Soundtrack]
CD Credit - Price: ($2.00)

Barney: Let's Go To the Farm
DVD Credit - Price: ($2.00)

Steven Halpern ~ Effortless Relaxation
CD Credit - Price: ($2.00)

Joshua Kadison ~ Painted Desert Serenade
CD Credit - Price: ($0.05)

What can we say? We stopped buying CDs after the '90s. I ultimately couldn't part with "The Beatles: Live at the BBC" -- even for $5.

Next weekend, we'll hock our excess books. And we know exactly where we're taking them. It's not Amazon.