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I'm still early on into the game and have only killed 3 dragons. However, even with the Steed Stone effect I'm only about 40 points off of being over-encumbered, mostly because I have 270 weight in dragon paraphernalia and I don't know if I should hold onto it or unload it at a store. I'm leaning towards selling it all and investing that money into buying the house in Whiterun so I can leave the heavy dragon parts there. Will I come across a satisfactory number of dragons in the future that I can safely sell these first few loots?

You can just sell them. The dragons at their lairs respawn, so if you ever need more scales or bones for smithing once you hit 100 you can revisit them. You really don't need a lot of materials for the gear, anyway.

Unless you're going for light armor proficiency it doesn't matter anyway. Daedric armor is still better than Dragon armor, sadly.

If you are going for light armor, there are still lots of other ways to max your armor value even without wearing dragon armor (personally I can't stand the look of either dragon armor set anyway, so I don't mind regardless).

Either way, TDW is correct in that it really doesn't matter since by the time you need dragon armor you'll probably have access to more bones and scales than you can even sell.

After you've figured out what gear you'd like, can you smith dragonbone stuff? If so, keep them to make and sell. If not, sell them straight up. Or just leave them rotting along with the dragon if you aren't in need of monies.

it really depends, I use it mainly for just being able to say "Hey I got this"
besides that dedric is better and in some ways so is ebony

Well my plan is to eventually have a set of both Dragonscale and Dragonbone, just for the sake of having it. I think I'm going to sell bones/scales until my smithing is closer to 90-100.

Insane icon---seems like you are on the right track. The bones and scales are too heavy to lug around but will eventually be valuable. And so, as suggested, sell them now to save money to invest in a house...so you have a place to store them for when you get smithing leveled up. I would suggest that you could start saving them earlier than when you get to 80-90 in smithing.

While Daedric may offer higher protection stats some players might like the aesthetic's of dragon plate or dragon scale. The way the weapons and armor look is part of the appeal to the game for me and this is of course subjective. I like Daedric swords and daggers but prefer Ebony bows. For armor my character is currently going with a guerilla warfare look: fur armor and gloves with dragon scale helm boots and helm. I like the look of Daedric armor but it does not fit with my character...and light armor focus.

early on you don't need them as you need smithing 100 to even make the stuff.
i sold them until i level my smithing. it really helped early on when needing gold.
the bones sell for over 250 gold and scales for 150 i think(pre perks)
ive got like 150 of each in my house. now i just leave them..

Sell them for now, one of the first things you need to get is a house. It make everything easier to have a safe place to leave your stuff

...and when you get a house, you can be that peculiar guy with all the dragonbones in his basement. Quite a conversation starter, and what better way to woo the populace than with your impressive bone and alcohol collections?

I keep some, sell most. I've no interest in the armor anyhow, but I've always been a collector. As for them being heavy, I just make my follow lug them about for me until we get to the next town. Better than a pack mule!

Just sell 'em. They're worth way more than their weight in gold, and dragons respawn. They're also much easier to kill at high levels.

I keep them, but I like the thought of giving any follower that uses light armor the best they can wear.

Lydia can carry quite a lot of stuff until you gather up the gold to buy a house (and if you are actually willing to wait a bit with power-leveling smithing and enchanting, and sell everything that has no use, then you can buy a house very early in the game).

In any case, you need very few bones for the set, and only if you go for dragonplate. The real question is which set you want to make, how quickly you intend to powerlevel smithing to 100, and whether or not you want to have an overpowered follower wearing similar overpowered armor too.

Also, keep in mind for heavy armor daedric is better, but more expensive since you'll pretty much have to buy most/all of the materials, but then again it's not that expensive if you actually bother selling everything you don't need.

I'd keep 'em, so I can smith up complete sets for all my followers, whether I want them in light or heavy armor. And there's a LOT of followers to gear up...

Uh if I were you I would sell them. When you get the high enough smithing skill, dragons are abundant. plus its always good to have a house for storage or to spend the night.

You can only have one follower at a time, and thus only need 1 set (or at most 1 set of each type) for your followers.

If you power-level smithing as fast as possible, you will be short on scales, so unless you plan to play extremely sub-optimally and wait a long long time before you level smithing, you're going to need to keep them.

Again, remember bones aren't nearly as useful as scales. Check the wiki pages for exact material requirements.

Yeah, I just realized kinda recently that there is no recipe that uses more bones than scales, and you get 3 of each from a dragon. Now the question is, where to sell them? When you're at the point where you can make dragon armor, you're also at the point where your selling is more limited by merchant gold than by having stuff to sell.

Maybe just only take one bone from each dragon.

...and if you've come to the point where you can smith Dragon armor, then you've sold enough of your manufactured wares to earn yourself the Merchant's perk in the Speech constellation.

My best customers are court mages in that regard. I buy out their supply of Soul Gems, then I get all my gold back by selling them my finest loot.

You're assuming I'm putting perks into speech. So far they've all gone into smithing, enchanting, alchemy, sneak, one-handed, and light armor for me.

So, you bemoan the lack of result you have when selling your wares, yet you've never invested in the one skill tree that improves your ability to sell wares.

The ability to sell any of my goods to any type of merchant is a one of my character's smaller life-goals in any incarnation, be it Skyrim or Oblivion.

I think you're misrepresenting what I said. I said that at that stage in the game, merchant gold limit is likely to be their limiter more than things to sell. In my case, even 1500 extra gold per merchant likely wouldn't help with the sheer amount of potions and enchanted jewelry and weapons I make.

My point wasn't necessarily that selling things is a hassle. It's that at that point in the game, you probably don't need even more junk to sell, and he can leave the excess bones right there.

I save for smithing but you can sell for quick coin

No need for perks. Just wait ~24 hours and they will get their money refreshed.

Trust me, you will kill MANY more dragons in your time . Once you buy your house (I got Breezehome) you can store them if you'd like. I have a bunch in one of my chests.