Amazon Trade-In Will Give You Credit For Your Old Compact Cameras
Amazon has expanding its trade-in system to electronics, including cameras, giving you an easy way to offload old gear.
Amazon’s trade-in program has been up and running for a long time now, but has only just expanded to include electronics, including cameras. With the Amazon trade-in system, you search to see if they want your gadget, rate it based on condition, they’ll pay for shipping when you send it out, and then you’ll get an Amazon gift card in the mail.
Across all electronics, there are currently 2,550 pieces of electronics that Amazon is looking for, but if you specify down to cameras that field narrows to 1,400 or so. Amazon is not interesting in your SLR, it seems, but you’d probably get a better value selling that properly anyway. As for your compact camera, it seems like the payout generally falls somewhere from 30%-40%, assuming it’s in good condition.
The Canon S90 will get you $143, 38% of its $380 sticker price, and the slightly newer Canon S95 will get you $175, 41% of the $430 it usually goes for. A Panasonic LX5 has a trade-in value of $220 and goes for $440 new on Amazon, which is a full 50% trade-in.
Not everything is that lucrative. The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T90 will get you a mere $67 of its $370 new cost, less than 20%.
However, in order to get the maximum amount, you need to hit a pretty stringent set of criteria:
While Amazon doesn’t seem to want anything to do with SLRs, lenses, flashes, or tripods, if you’re looking to get rid of an old compact camera, cellphone or MP3 player that’s gathering dust in your closet, it seems to be a pretty good way of doing it.