Sep 162008
“Come on, you won’t even give me a penny?”
I know some of you traffic in buying and selling used records. Probably all of you have sold your unwanted records and CDs to used record stores. Name an album or two you’ve tried to sell over the years that no used record dealer would touch! If you’re a used record dealer, name a record you wouldn’t touch, even for a penny! And what happens to these unwanted used albums?
Funnily enough, I was in Corning, NY during Labor Day weekend and stopped in a antique/thrift store. They had a whole pile of albums by Chuck and the other Mangione, some of which I believe were autographed. It was the only music they had at all in the store.
This is a topic that I like. One example that comes to mind was the Atractions’ solo album that came out in 1980. It took me a while to get rid of that. I’ll pop in when I think of others in my wheelin’ & dealing’ record store life.
I also have traded in books @ used book stores for many years & I can remember one book store not accepting the Pentagon Papers because they had so many that they threw their excess copies away.
Oh, Lord. There are so many albums that are literally worthless, and you see them all the time. (Which is of course what makes them worthless.) Off the top of my head, anything by:
– Dan Fogelberg
– Herb Alpert
– Ferrante & Teicher
– Barbara Streisand
– Loggins & Messina
– Mitch Miller
– Post-1975 Neil Diamond
– Andre Kostelanetz
– Chuck Mangione
I give you the HVB Guarantee that *every* thrift store in the known universe has at least one album by at least one of these artists in it at any time. And most will have multiple albums from all of them, all the time. If you were able to wave a magic wand and make all these LPs disappear, the Earth would shift in space due to the sudden loss of trillions of pounds of worthless vinyl.
I have worked in only one used record store in my life, and then only very briefly. This was in late 1987. In the upstairs storeroom, they had a stack of copies of THRILLER as high as my waist, and I’m 6’6″.
You would think they would have stopped accepting them after the first couple dozen.
I submit that the CD of the first half of the 1990s that was most often traded in was the Breeders’ LAST SPLASH.
The short time I spent in Athens, GA, many hours were spent in the little comic store above Wuxtry. It was called Bizzaro Wuxtry. They had room, floor to ceiling, of used vinyl. There was no organization, only stacks of records. The coolest part was they sold them by the pound. I think it was $1.98 per pound (roughly three LPs). You could spend hours in there scouring the bins. We would return to work the next day to share our “discoveries”.
The most common ones we would run across were Chicago. The Best of Bread. And, of course, the ones mentioned above. Lots of folks discarded their Chicago collections.
A common used CD I run across is Good Stuff by the B-52s. Has anyone paid full price for that one?
TB
You are on FIRE, RTH! Keep ’em coming. Jeez, I completely forgot there was a second Mangione. We need a full report, pronto. My life is now fulfilled for this day.
In the fall of 1982 I tried to unload my entire Queen collection to a used record store in Evanston. At the time they had a Psychic TV poster in the window so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they wouldn’t even let me leave them there.
All of those albums got laked (Michigan.)
I have since reacquired each one of them digitally and unashamedly enjoy them regularly.
I have it on good authority that, at Rhino Records, you can get Herb Alpert and Jackie Lomax for 40 cents (ba-dum, ba-dum).
Anything by Jane Olivor. Yup, you’ve seen her records in the dollar bin, ever heard one?
As an aside, I think somebody should write some goofy lyrics to “feels so good”.
You know, there’s an adjunct topic here of records that are always in every used record store. I haven’t researched too much, but I’m inclined to believe there are regional concentrations.
I’ve never sold records, but I have to believe that Cheap Trick At Budokan is in the mix as well. They pressed more than enough for everybody who would want one.
Thanks to all concerned for lodging Feels So Good in my brain all afternoon.
When I first started trying to thin out my LP collection, I tried to unload Dare, the hit album by the Human League. They just laughed at me.
See, I can never remember which one is “Feels So Good” and which one is Herb Alpert’s “Rise.”
Recently I tried to trade in a Sonics CD at my local Newbury Comics & they didn’t take it, which was pretty surprising, if not shocking.
Also, to go on the opposite tack, you hardly see any Beatles albums in any of the thrift/consignment stores. I’m sure HBV will back me up on that. Also, whenever a store goes out of business & has a liquidation sale, the Beatles stuff is usually nowhere to be found.
“Wow, Sgt. Pepper’s for 4.99? I know I have six copies, but my friend in Katmandu needs it, so I can’t pass it up!
Agreed. The Beatles are the first to go. Always.
TB
A neighbor, who knows I still have a turntable and own lots of records, gave me her ancient high school record collection a few years ago. Some of the albums were doubles that I already owned, like late-period Beatles albums and Dark Side of the Moon. One was an album I’m glad I now own but have never played, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, or whatever that thing’s called (I recall it having some songs I liked before all that Thriller stuff drove me batty). One of the album’s is the second Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band live album. Of course I get a kick out of that one. The other half dozen or so are albums that I would imagine used record dealers wouldn’t touch. The Jackson Browne album with “On the Boulevard” and a Jimmy Buffet album stand out in my mind. I should probably throw it out, but it’s embarrassing that I even own that thing. What if The Cool Patrol is snooping through my trash tomorrow? It seems safer to let those albums sit in a pile in my basement.
Bob Welch: French Kiss. I’ve never heard a smidge of it, but have seen it hundreds of times. So you are a third-rate record label in the mid-fifties, and you decide to put out an album of Christmas Favorites played on the Organ and Chimes. Where are your friends? Is no one honest enough to tell you to stop? Apparently not.