Cd storage / backup

You’ve gotten some good suggestions already. I could add to it as I have over 4000 CDs (in addition to the 20 Terabytes of flac/shn files stored on external drives). You can kill two birds with one stone, depending on how your CDs are currently stored. Most people use/need/want the fancy jewel case any store bought commercial CD would come in. If you sell your CDs as you plan terrific for you, but in all likelihood you wont find a buyer for all of them, unless your price is such that you’re practically giving them away. So.... throw out the jewel case and store them in 100 pack spindles, like this https://www.amazon.com/EMPTY-CAKE-SPINDLE-100-DISCS/dp/B0089Y6WPG Then, after ripping, retain them as "backup" to whatever hard drive you rip them to. Of course, store as a flac or shn, not wav. 500 CDs takes very little space, as in less than 400 Gig. Practically any external drive would suffice. Best of luck.

EDIT:

If accurate ripping is of utmost concern, you want to use this http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

There is a high propensity they might get scratched.

Hi jred. Welcome to the forum!

If a disk is used often, the propensity to becoming scratched is always present, regardless of how it’s stored. Storage on a spindle becomes particularly viable in scenarios where one is "archiving" the media for backup, as the OP conceivably would do. For disks that are used regularly, naturally it can be more convenient if the disk is individually packaged in its jewel case.

As for aesthetics, that of course is a personal preference. If "art work" (booklet that accompanies the CD) is a necessity, obviously that too has to be dealt with accordingly and can to a certain extent dictate storage options.

Invariably though, the larger ones collection of CDs becomes, the more compelling it becomes to find a solution that does not involve jewel cases. In fact, at some level when ones collection grows into the many thousands, one can become compelled to get rid of CDs altogether and instead just store the data on an external drive, in a compressed and lossless format.

Point is, for those with seriously large music collections, physical space and scalability of space is definitely an issue to be reckoned with.

Not to muddy the thread by going off topic, but this is a big reason I don’t have/use vinyl albums but use digital in the first place. Space!

And for those with the "Crème de la crème" in audio - reel-to-reel tapes - where 30 minutes of music is on media larger than a frisbee, typically these folks have relatively few reels (and hence not much music) or they are extremely wealthy and have significant dedicated "library" space.