On the off chance that you've still got any laying around, Amazon is preparing to let customers exchange old compact discs for cold, hard store credit.
The online retailer on Wednesday added music CDs to the list of items that can be traded in for a gift card via the Amazon Trade-In Program. A quick note: The CD trade-in mechanism doesn't appear to be live yet and nobody, including PCMag, has been able to get the official word from Amazon on when that will happen.
Amazon's Trade-In Program has until now mainly been a swap meet for electronics products but books, video games, and DVDs are also listed as items that can be exchanged. Trading in music CDs, when the company starts accepting them, could fetch customers about $2 or $3 apiece, according to retail experts polled by CNN SmartMoney blogger Kelli Grant.
That's not a lot of reward, though Amazon does pop for the shipping costs on trade-in items. And who knows, maybe there's a bigger contingent of CD pack rats itching to get reacquainted with the joys of printing out shipping labels and packing slips out there.
One thing to note is that Amazon, like other online buyers of used CDS, wants the jewel boxes and cover art included in your original purchase from way back when. Scratched discs will likely be rejected, as well.
With CDs going to the way of the dinosaurs as people increasingly get their music via MP3s, why does Amazon want in on such a dwindling market, anyway? Probably because people trading in stuff for gift cards and store credit spend about 40 percent more than its value when they redeem it, Grant pointed out.
What's more, getting more participants in a program like its trade-in portal tends to create loyal customers for Amazon, something for which the savvy online retailer is always in the market, the blogger noted.
At the very least, it's nice to know that some of our musical purchases from days gone by look to be getting a temporary reprieve from landfill duty.
For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.
