Donate/sell Region 1 DVDs in the UK?

March 25, 2016 5:48 PM

Long story short: I moved to the UK over eight years ago, and at the time it seemed vitally important that I bring my DVD collection with me. However, in all that time, I've only watched maybe two of them. I'm wanting to simplify and find the unwatched ones a good home, but almost all of them are Region 1 (and I'm in 2, obviously). Does anyone know where I can sell--or failing that, donate--a good-sized stack of Region 1 DVDs in the UK, preferably in London?
posted by Mr. Bad Example to Shopping (3 answers total)

zapper will buy your DVDs. You get a value from the site and send them off postage-free. There's nothing in the FAQs to say they don't accept Region 1 but you could contact them to check.
posted by billiebee at 6:04 PM on March 25, 2016

I would imagine that there are a significant number of region free DVD player users here in the UK, so eBay or CraigsList would be the way to go - otherwise as long as you're clear about the region and simply want to give the DVDs away then local charity shops or Freecycle would be useful to you.
posted by DancingYear at 6:14 AM on March 26, 2016

Region-free players definitely used to be a thing in the UK: back in the day, US movies were released on DVD in the US way before the UK - let's say 6 months - so there was a reasonable market for imported R1 DVDs and players that would play them. That was a while ago now though - let's say 15 years - and since then the studios have dramatically reduced that release delay (primarily to counter piracy) and so I'm guessing this market has declined significantly (as well as the DVD market in general). So - adding to DancingYear's point - there certainly *were* a lot of UK folks with R1 players, I guess the next question though is whether those folks still have those things lying around. I'm sure eBay (is Loot still a thing in London?) is worth a punt, but that said, the other aspect of the import market was "collectibility" - e.g famous titles with directors commentaries or special features not available on the UK/ European release - so I'd say it's also going to make a difference if you're trying to shift the original Godfather box set vs the vanilla release of Dude Where's My Car.
posted by 7 Minutes of Madness at 9:25 AM on March 26, 2016