One Woman’s Junk Is…

Very rarely is anything I post on this blog an original idea of my own.  I can’t claim that I found out about online swapping on my own – I’m pretty sure that, like most good things in my life, I found this one out from Real Simple.

There are a couple of good sites out there for swapping your books, music or DVDs for new (to you) ones.  The idea is that you post your old media that you are willing to get rid of, and you can search through other people’s lists for things you want.  These items are free*, as opposed to buying used items from craigslist or ebay.

*Both of the sites I discuss here require that you pay for shipping your items to the new owner, but you don’t have to pay for the items that come your way.  It equals out so that you essentially are paying a buck or two for each item you order.

I’ve been using paperbackswap.com for probably about six months now, and I have to say that I’m addicted.  In fact, I get a little impatient waiting for people to request books from me, even though I have plenty of to-be-read books in my possession.  PaperBackSwap has sister sites for CDs and DVDs; it would be nice if these were all integrated into one site, however, you can trade credits between the sites.

I just joined (today actually) swaptree.com, so I haven’t done any trades yet.  We’ll see how this one goes.  I mainly joined it in hoping that between the two sites, someone would want the CDs I am trying to get rid of.

Here’s the primary difference between the two sites.  PaperBackSwap involves one-way transactions.  I have a list of books that I am willing to send away; person A requests one of my books and I mail it to her.  I get a credit on the site that I can use to request a book from any of the members.  SwapTree instead involves two-way transactions.  I send an item to Person A and Person A sends an item to me.  The advantage of the PaperBackSwap system is that I don’t have to order something from Person A’s inventory.  SwapTree does, however, have a system that will tell me when a person both has an item I want as well as wants an item I have.  The advantage I see in the SwapTree system is that the trades can be for any kind of media; I can trade a book for a CD, a CD for a DVD, etc.

I still love Half Price Books and most any used bookstore.  But usually when you sell something to those stores, you get a few cents for your books and then still have to pay three or four dollars for a used book.  It’s a great way to recycle your unwanted books, but you don’t get much in return.  I’m loving that swapping my stuff online means that for every unwanted book I get rid of, I get a new and wanted book in return!