apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Here's a few ideas I found from makezine.com

DIY CD Jewel Case Photo Calendar Printing
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/07/diy_cd_jewel_ca.html

DIY CD jewel case photo frames
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/05/diy_cd_jewel_case_photo_frames.html

I've seen a gajillion uses for jewel cases on craftster.org. I'm sure one of those people (or a crafty friend of yours?) would be happy to take them off your hand, maybe for cost of shipping? I doubt anyone would buy them from you. There's always freecycle.

Be careful moving them to binders! The plastic/vinyl/whatever in the storage pages tends to stick to bare CDs after a few years. I found this out the hard way! Go to your local office supply store and invest in a few hundred (by the look of things ;->) Tyvek sleevs to put your CDs in before you put them in binders.

Get them mail-order here :
http://www.uline.com/Group_151.asp?pricode=wg299

i'll join mjoe in plugging freecycle. though you might want to offer them in smaller batches rather than all at once. they're useful for mailing disks, storing data disks, replacing broken cases, etc. you can google up a freecycle near you. in new york, there are yahoo groups for freecycle: freecyclenewyorkcity and BrooklynFreeCycle. The other boroughs probably have them, too. freecycle is a great way to get rid of useable stuff that you don't really want without throwing it in the garbage.

If I were you (this is what we are planing to do with out 1000 cd collection) I would burn them all into a electronic storage unit, Apple makes them like a shuffle, and then would put ALL the cd's on their respective case, put them in a box and store them in your mother's garage, or a storage space.... It might be more sensible than risking the quality of the cd, as boomer pointed out, and buying all those sleeves and other accessories won't be cheap.... (my two cents)

When I downsized my CD collection I copied them all onto my computer, backed them up on DVD discs and then ended up selling 90% of the original discs to Secondspin.com - I ended up making about five hundred dollars.

I kept my favorite 10% as an emergency backup....

Ok....I just couldn't bear to let them go.

Yup, Freecycle. I have taken two bunches of them from people on Freecycle, for transporting data CDs to printers.

Anusha is right. I transferred all of mine from jewel cases to sleeves a couple years ago, but I'm still having trouble storing them. Now I guess I'm going to burn them (when am I going to find the time to do that?) and I'll wish I hadn't spent all that $ on sleeves and storage boxes.

PS - I used boxes that hold like 100 cds in sleeves instead of binders because you can never find what you're looking for in binders. You can easily flip through the cds in the box. Plus, if you want to keep them in alphabetical order or whatever, you can easily add/subtract/rearrange in the boxes. In the binders, forget about it.

you could use them at picture frames & hang them in a grid. i saw that on hgtv or something. it was cute.

Thanks, all. GreenDisk sounds like a great solution, and from I read on their site, they will take any and all electronic paraphernalia to recycle, so I can throw in a bunch of old cables and headphones too.

I bought a plain white CD binder from the MOMA design store that has Tyvek-lined pockets that won't stick to the disks. After looking around for about a month for a binder that wasn't ugly black nylon with a zipper, I'm so pleased with mine:
http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay_CD%20Wallet%20%20Small_10451_10001_11967
And then I sent all my jewel cases (plus old floppies) to GreenDisk.

I had a similar problem, but did not want to get rid of the jewel cases. I bought a Bonde bookcase from Ikea with 4 CD inserts. So now the bottom half of the bookcases houses 500 CDs and you cannot see them. I am really happy with it!

http://www.jewelboxing.com/

Donate them. I gave a bunch of my old CD cases to our local library. They alway need more since their CD cases get broken so often when they are checked out. Now, I am the "CD Lady" whenever I go in.

I had a similar problem (mine were data discs, not music). I scanned each disc with a program called DiskTracker (http://www.disktracker.com/) to keep a running list of every single file name on every disc. I numbered all my discs to correspond with the database so when I'm looking for "filexyz.eps" it will point me to the exact disc it's on. (Also, I posted the jewel cases in the Free section on Craigslist -- they were gone in a few hours.)

Am about to try a shipment to CD Recycling Center in Salem, NH (USA). Yhey seem like a viable outfit. They'll take CD and DVDs and their jewel cases and will
a) reuse cases that are in good shape by selling them
b) grind up the disks and recover the gold and other metals for reuse,
b) grind up broken jewel cases and the non-metal parts of the disks for downcycling into durable goods (yes, shipped to China, but their "why would someone pay $12,000 to ship something to China and dump it" argument on what happens to the plastics makes sense.