4 Essential Tips for Selling on Discogs as a Beginner

Item condition, or grading, is one of the most important factors considered by record collectors. Buyers on Discogs prefer high-quality items — a whopping 87% of the items sold on Discogs last year were graded Very Good Plus (VG+) or above.

Once you’ve found the release you’d like to sell in our database, you’ll need to determine the condition of your item before you list it. Discogs uses the Goldmine Grading Guide to report the condition of physical music. Because a buyer cannot evaluate the condition of an item before they purchase it, they rely on sellers to accurately describe and grade their inventory.

As a general rule, you should grade a record in the way you would want to receive it. You can also add comments about the item to your listing to help buyers better understand the exact condition of the record you’re selling.

As a collector, you may prefer to organize your records by genre, artist, or even alphabetically by title. However, as a seller, these methods can make it challenging to quickly fulfill orders as your inventory grows and picking a specific record from your shelves becomes increasingly difficult.

To combat this, we suggest organizing your inventory numerically. To do this, assign each item in your inventory a unique, increasing number and store the items in numerical order (1, 2, 3, and so on). When a buyer purchases item No. 2, it’ll be easy to locate among the other records in your stock. Be sure not to reuse numbers — simply assign new numbers when you add new items to your inventory.

Your Discogs profile and your communication with buyers are the online equivalent of making conversation with customers behind your shop’s counter. Just like in person, sellers on Discogs are responsible for their buyers’ shopping experience.

Your communication should reflect how you would like to be treated as a shopper and should foster interaction between you and your customers. Do your best to satisfy your buyers’ needs and curiosities, provide tracking numbers, respond promptly to questions, and, should they arise, calmly and professionally resolve any issues. You should also share details about the records you stock and can demonstrate your music knowledge by providing personalized recommendations to buyers based on their purchases.

Adequate packaging protects fragile physical music items while in transit and also serves as your customer’s first in-person interaction with your shop, so it’s crucial that you get it right. Proper packaging of vinyl records, CDs, and cassettes ensures that items will arrive in the condition they were sold and can help you show buyers that you appreciate their purchase.

It’s best to invest in mailers used specifically for shipping vinyl records and other physical music items, as well as protective plastic sleeves, cardboard stiffeners, and bubble wrap. You can also use your packaging as an opportunity to promote your shop and invite first-time buyers to continue shopping with you. You may want to incorporate branded mailers or marketing materials like business cards, stickers, or thank you notes for people who buy from your shop.