What Media Does Give My Books Network Collect in St. Louis?

Give My Books Network collects nearly every physical format, alongside books, in any quantity. A Local Pick-Up Partner is the locally owned family business that comes to your door on a scheduled service day.

• DVDs, Blu-rays, and box sets
• CDs and audiobooks on disc
• VHS tapes, including the shelf nobody has touched since 2004
• Vinyl records, LPs and 45s alike
• Video games, board games, and puzzles

Can You Really Donate Vinyl Records in St. Louis?

Yes, and St. Louis sends more vinyl through the network than most cities its size. This is a record town with deep crates, and the collections that surface when somebody moves off Cherokee Street or out near the Delmar Loop can be remarkable.

Records are welcome by the crate. Give My Books Network does not appraise them, and nobody will tell you what a pressing is worth. What happens is simpler: your Local Pick-Up Partner sorts everything offsite, and records that still play find their way to people who want them.

How Does DVD and Media Pickup Work?

Pack the media yourself, set it out by 8 AM, and a Local Pick-Up Partner collects between 8 AM and 8 PM. The partner does not bring boxes, so use what you have around the house.

1. Enter your ZIP code and choose a service day.
2. Pack discs, tapes, and records into boxes or totes. Books can go in the same box.
3. Set everything on the covered front porch by 8 AM.
4. Leave. Nobody needs to be home, and there is nothing to sign.

What Media Cannot Be Accepted?

Cracked discs, warped records, snapped tapes, and cases with nothing inside them cannot be accepted. A disc that skips through every track has no second life waiting for it.

Scratches are a judgment call and mostly fine. A DVD with a scuff still plays. A record with a light surface hiss still plays. If it works when you put it on, send it. If it does not, leave it out and save the box space.

Where Do Donated Discs and Records Go in St. Louis?

Partners sort everything offsite after collection. Many items are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to libraries, senior centers, after-school programs, and nonprofits that requested media. Some are resold, and that resale is what pays for your free pickup.

Not every disc finds a home, and items that cannot may eventually be recycled, as a last resort. Libraries are careful about what media they accept for the same reasons the American Library Association's page on donating books and media lays out, which is why a pickup can say yes to a crate that a branch has to decline.

Packing Media Without Cracking the Cases

Pack records upright, never flat, and never in a stack. Vinyl warps under its own weight, and a summer afternoon on a St. Louis porch will finish the job if the box is left in the sun.

Discs travel fine in their cases, stacked spine-up like books. VHS tapes are sturdy and forgiving. Keep every box light enough for one person to lift, cover the cardboard if storms are coming, and set it out by 8 AM. Schedule, set out, done.