Sell Your CDs Online in Australia

So you've got a tower of CDs gathering dust and you're thinking of donating them to an op shop. Don't. Some of those discs are someone else's white whale, and frankly it pains me to imagine a mint-condition pressing ending up in a milk crate at a garage sale. List them here. Set your price. We charge fifty cents flat when it sells — not a percentage of your price — because we'd rather the music moved than the fees did. Now go and get the good ones off the shelf.

Selling secondhand shouldn't be a part-time job

You know how it goes on Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree. You list an album, and within the hour there are eleven messages: four asking "is this still available?", three offering half price, two arranging a pickup time they have no intention of honouring, and one offering to swap it for a PlayStation game. A week later the disc is still on your shelf, and you've aged.

CD Sauce removes the chit-chat. Your price is the price — no haggling thread, no meetup, no negotiating with strangers at 11pm. A buyer pays through Stripe before you lift a finger, and the handover happens at the post office, not in a car park. List it, sell it, post it, paid.

How selling on CD Sauce works

1. List it. Artist, album, condition, your price. We'll find the album art for you — no photographing a jewel case under your kitchen light. You can also mark a listing as open to swaps, or both sale and swap.
2. A buyer pays. Checkout runs through Stripe, the same payment system used by millions of businesses worldwide. The money is committed before you post anything.
3. You post it. AusPost, padded mailer, done. Packing tips below.
4. You get paid. Once the delivery's confirmed, the money lands in your bank account via Stripe. First time selling? Stripe runs a quick one-time ID check — that's an Australian legal requirement for receiving payments, and it's with Stripe, not us.

What it costs

Fifty cents. Flat. Per sale.

• No listing fees
• No monthly fees
• No percentage of your sale price
• The buyer pays a 50¢ service fee on their side; you never see or pay it

Whether the disc sells for five dollars or a hundred and fifty, the fee is the same fifty cents — your rarest disc costs you no more to sell than your dustiest. We are not running a charity — we're running a record store that happens to live on the internet, and the lights stay on at fifty cents a sale.

What can you sell?

Any genuine CD: albums, singles, EPs, soundtracks, compilations — Australian pressings, imports, the lot. If it's a real disc in a real case, somebody out there probably wants it; the stuff you assume nobody cares about is routinely the stuff a collector has been hunting longest. The only hard rule is the obvious one: originals only. No burned copies, no counterfeits — this is a record store, not a flea market.

Grading your CD's condition

Every listing carries one of four grades. Buyers trust them, so grade honestly:

• Mint — like new CD, cover and case. No skipping. Looks and plays perfectly.
• Excellent — used but not worn. No more than a couple of visible scratches, maybe one occasional skip. Case and cover clean.
• Good — well used. Multiple visible scratches, expect 2–3 skips. Case and cover readable with wear.
• Fair — heavily used. Many scratches, regular skipping. For completists and the brave.

When in doubt, grade down. In thirty-odd years behind a counter, real or spiritual, I have never once heard a complaint that a disc arrived in better condition than described.

Packing and posting your CDs

A CD survived the 90s in the door pocket of a Commodore; it can survive AusPost — if you pack it properly.

• Wrap the case. Jewel cases crack when flexed. A layer of bubble wrap or even a folded sheet of newspaper inside a padded mailer does the job.
• Use a rigid or padded mailer, not a bare envelope. A snapped case is the number-one cause of sad buyers.
• Add tracking for anything valuable. For a collectible, the couple of extra dollars is cheap insurance — and buyers love a tracking number.
• Post promptly. The sale's already paid for. Don't make them wonder.