[Nick Zwar]

I have replaced jewel cases, no problem, though I do not tolerate scratches on CDs. I suppose most people would go up the wall if their CDs arrived just flimsily put into an envelope. (I think I would too.)

When I started to buy music, there was a large record store here in Cologne, the Cologne Saturn Music Dome. It claimed to be the store with the largest record collection in the world. I don’t know if that was true, but I have never seen a larger one. At their height in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the classical music selection alone was on two department store floors, floor one was opera, choir, vocal, solo recitals, floor two was orchestral, chamber, modern/avant-garde etc. Their soundtrack section was huge too. If something was out on CD, they had it. Even in their later days, when they started to “size down” on CDs, they still had a large soundtrack selection where you could even find Intrada and La-La Land special releases (like the 3CD CONAN or the John Williams Harry Potter Box from LLL) next to “regular” soundtrack releases. Over the years, though, I saw the store shrinking… some floors were diverted to other business or rented out, and in the final years, all of the CDs were on one double sized floor, … and even that floor space was shared with a (considerable) selection of DVDs and Blurays and Vinyls and Posters/Memorabilia. But a few years ago, that all stopped. Nowadays, the former record store is a gamer location, “Xperion”, the rest of the floors are office floors. They don’t sell any CDs anymore in that store (they do still sell some CDs in their regular electronic chain stores).
CDs are like vinyl now… there are a few dedicated collectors who still buy (and sell) stuff, there are labels who still print LPs and CDs and cater to that niche, but it is no longer a mass market with mass market overflow (that then ends up on the used market). This will never going to change back. Quite the contrary, I’m actually quite amazed how resilient CDs are and how persistent the niche is. But it’s a niche, and even when it is a persistent niche, it is nevertheless a niche that is still shrinking. So you are right, I don’t see how you will ever get a vendor like OneCentCDs, I guess they had their time and then it was over.