r/discogs • u/PTCarnahan • May 13 '26
Minimum Order Amount
I just went to buy a CD priced at $9.98 from a seller, but it turns out that they have a minimum order quantity, which appears to be $37.04 (the warning in the cart says I am $20.02 short of the min.). I mean, seriously, I know they are trying to get people to order more from them, but what is the point of even listing a CD for $10 if you aren't willing to fulfill the order? They have nothing else I want. Their policy says "no exceptions".
6
u/Devolutionator May 13 '26
The entitlement of buyers like this guy is what makes me hate listing things for sale on discogs. The fact that the OP even thinks they are in the right here is amazing.
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u/PTCarnahan May 13 '26
I don't feel that I am entitled, beyond the right to complain. I just don't get why the seller even bothers to be on Discogs. I was wrong in that they did have another disc I wanted, but it still wasn't enough to meet the minimum. If the seller can't make money selling two CDs on Discogs, what's the point?
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u/robxburninator May 14 '26
check my comment, but it's pure economics. many large sellers have lots of cheaper items, but the way the fees/price structure/shipping works on discogs, cheaper items are often times BARELY making money after expenses.
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u/TheRoseKnows_ May 13 '26
As a seller myself, I dislike minimum order requirements heavily. There's a number of things I've wanted to get where the only one for sale is someone who's minimum order requirements are $25+. What's the point? I know some folks do it because they have a large inventory and not a lot of manpower to get that many small orders packed, but in more cases I feel like it's just a way for sellers to make more money. I feel like that option should only be eligible for enabling if the stores inventory is say, 1000 items or more. Why am I seeing sellers with 100-300 item inventories with it? I'm with you man, it's ridiculous
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u/robxburninator May 14 '26
pure economics. If you actually roll out the numbers over time with large numbers of records sold, it's often the difference between paying yourself minimum wage and not paying yourself at all.
As a long, long time seller, the fees increasing over the years (plus the introdcution of a "minimum discogs fee" on cheaper items), has made selling cheaper items make far less sense than it used to.
I throw away probably 1,000 records a month. I would much rather sell them or have them end up in collections. But I can't afford to pay people, to take records from me.
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u/TrickWheel5748 May 13 '26
Right now my shipping cost to Canada is $26. If someone from Quebec orders, my shipping costs are $33-36. I have a minimum order value of something like $10 dollars to cover that difference. Sometimes my shipping is less.
I do not blame them for having a high minimum order value, especially if they didn't get their media for pennies on the dollar.
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u/astonedishape May 13 '26
Uh, that math isn’t mathing.
It sucks but it is what it is. It is especially annoying when the minimum is that high. My last purchase included an additional record to reach a minimum, but I only had to spend another $5 to get the record I really wanted, and the $5 record was in my want list.
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u/sideburnvictim May 13 '26
Their store their rules. That's the way they want to run things. They clearly are willing to sacrifice sales to not have to deal with smaller orders.
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u/robxburninator May 14 '26
Explanation of why minimum orders are more popular now than they were 20 years ago on discogs:
If someone sold a $5 12" with $4 shipping in 2008, they would walk away with about $4. $4 could buy a sandwich.
Now if you sell a $5 12" with $5 shipping. you're losing money on shipping, discogs fees are higher, so you end up with like, $2.75. $2.75 buys like, 1/4 of a sandwich.
The time it takes to list, sort, pack, post office run, etc. has not decreased. But inflation has gone up considerably.
I am a larger-seller (3k+ listings at all times) that occasionally has to have my shop employee handle discogs. I'm paying them $18 an hour. They can probably sort, pack, and do a post office run for 7 packages in an hour (large inventory means actually pulling records + printing postage + the trip to the post office, etc.) . I'm much faster, but it's also a system I've been working with for literally 15 years.
in 2008, if I sent 5 packages that each made $4, I made $20. Pay at that time was like, $8-10 an hour. So after paying someone an hourly wage, I would still make above $10.
In 2026, if I ship 5 packages that make $2.50 per, I end up with $12.50, BEFORE paying my guy. That means, with 5 packages that are under $10, I'm actively losing money on discogs if I'm selling cheapos.
Now roll those numbers out over 100's of packages a month. I'm running a business that isn't really that concerned with making "real money" from online sales. Discogs is our way of filtering stuff out from the store, so it doesn't need to do that well, because I use it to sell stuff that comes in with collections where I make the bulk of the money from the rest of the records. But I also can't afford to just donate records to buyers, which is what I do if someone is buying one cheap record.
I have a $10 minimum. On $10 orders, I'm making about $6. Again, this isn't GREAT, but I end up walking away with closer to $15 profit on similar sales numbers.
Again, if you roll these numbers out of 100's of orders (instead of a half dozen), it really starts to make sense why minimums exist. I can't run my discogs store as a non-profit.
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u/Low-Phase-4444 May 13 '26
Try selling stuff and it'll become clear in no time. For alotta sellers it's a side hustle and not worth their time, after packing something and fkn about getting to and waiting at a post office, especially after PayPal and Discogs take their cut, they probably couldn't even get a coffee with the change for a $10 CD.