Continuing with CDs?

Radiohead- Ok Computer

i mean hardly any of this shit is "rare" in any sense

I'd be surprised if I got even $150 for that collection at Half Price Books.

$8,000 folks, take it or leave it

he still has no contact info in the ad lol

This has got to be some sort of wind-up, see who takes the bait kind of thing...

lol f. hazel's response is what I was thinking

either someone glanced through it and grabbed a handful of cds that looked decent that they'd want, or someone already did some smart cherry-picking and grabbed the actual rarities, right?

there are a few things in there that might be difficult to find if you're looking for a cd copy! but uhhh who is really tearing their hair out trying to find a cd copy of something in 2017?

there was a store (since relocated) in mpls (shuga) (they still sell on ebay) that would mark vinyl up to the most ridiculous prices, i think this strategy can pay off in two ways:

1) every once in awhile some dummy will actually bite and you'll make some ridiculous hundreds of dollars on a record you bought at a garage sale for 50 cents, effectively earning more than you would doing a normal $4 markup on a bunch of records, plus saving you a lot of time/etc because it's only one transaction and mailing

2) i would find that, browsing through these $300 lutheran college men's choir records from the 60s, all of a sudden you'd think "oh yeah $30 for a NM+ (he LOVED NM+, everything was NM+) of Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart that's not bad", so you'd get a weird stockholm syndrome and then maybe buy something that was only 2X normal price instead of 20X normal price

(raises hand shamefully)

stuff like the Alvin Lucier especially I prefer on CD. Some nice rare stuff in that list but I'd bet it's been cherry picked already.

you'd get a weird stockholm syndrome and then maybe buy something that was only 2X normal price instead of 20X normal price

imo there's a 50/50 chance that the missing ones are just ones someone who wasn't a supercollector grabbed to listen to, like the missing items are all of the zepplin/rolling stones variety

The CDs have been upgraded to Very Good Condition (some even Mint). They have recently been inspected, cleaned and graded by an Expert of 40 years in the business.

cleaned

Noooooo

they wiped the cat piss and spiders off

Good, related thread re: wacko pricing on LPs: the pathos of unsold stock

cleaned

Noooooo

― sleeve, Tuesday, January 31, 2017 3:11 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this. when I see that something has been 'cleaned' I don't bid on it. Just leave it alone, grade accurately, and let me clean it if i choose to clean it once it's mine

i love dirty finds, i found a dusty and dirty early issue copy (no name on the cover) of Neil Young's s/t album and cleaned it at home and it came out sounding sublime. same thing w/a copy i dug up of 'mr tambourine man' by the byrds. both of them a buck apiece.

big difference between cleaning LPs vs. "cleaning" CDs

you'd get a weird stockholm syndrome and then maybe buy something that was only 2X normal price instead of 20X normal price

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring
― attention vampire (MatthewK), Tuesday, January 31, 2017 2:06 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah exactly, thx i wasn't familiar w/that term

yeah for sure...an expert with a bottle of windex and a paper towel i'm guessing. over 40 years in the business of cleaning cds, cds having been around for 32 years.

oh, gotcha - I was thinking more of those "sand it down" type of operations, kiss of death for CDs imo

ugh yeah those. not sure why cleaning is very necessary beyond getting some gunk off, cd players from twenty years ago would skip bc of a speck of dust, the newer models will play through almost any defect that isn't a gouge ime.

over 40 years in the business of cleaning cds, cds having been around for 32 years.

― nomar, Tuesday, January 31, 2017 4:10 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he was part of the beta program

so those buffing/sanding things aren't good for CDs? i was thinking of picking one up ...

We used to do resurfacing at a record store I worked at. It wasn't bad really, although really deep gouges and I imagine repeated use would not be ideal. But it saved some scratched-up discs of my own.

xp more that is ruins any resale value, it might be of use in extreme cases of scratching

i don't even sell CDs that need to be cleaned. they should be clean already!

yeah that is kind of the catch-22 here, if this is a well cared-for collection and stored in the little sleeves, how the hell did they get to the point of needing cleaning?!

see above cat pee and spiders comment

here's the thing. especially online. if a CD is actually worth more than 5 or 10 bucks than the people buying them want a copy that's like new. anything less than that ain't gonna be worth much. its not worth the aggravation to sell scratched CDs. they'll sit online or in my store forever.

Remember too that itunes has scratch doctor thing for importing CDs--it's slow, but it works.

Got a pile of cds, dvds and books delivered today and it still makes me so happy. I could save a fair amount of money by going more digital but I love this too much.

so those buffing/sanding things aren't good for CDs? i was thinking of picking one up ...

― the late great, Tuesday, January 31, 2017 5:26 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ime they do not work and in fact have ruined discs

(i've never owned one but i saw them used in a media library at a university where i worked)

Best Buy Isn't

Best Buy has just told music suppliers that it will pull CDs from its stores come July 1. At one point, Best Buy was the most powerful music merchandiser in the U.S., but nowadays it's a shadow of its former self, with a reduced and shoddy offering of CDs. Sources suggest that the company's CD business is nowadays only generating about $40 million annually. While it says it's planning to pull out CDs, Best Buy will continue to carry vinyl for the next two years, keeping a commitment it made to vendors. The vinyl will now be merchandised with the turntables, sources suggest.

I was killing time before an appointment at a Best Buy not too long ago; went looking for said vinyl and finally it in a dusty corner of the store in a stack on a shelf next to some Crosley turntables. So...Good Luck With 2 More Years Of That.

vinyl sold with.... turntables? an idea just crazy enough to work.

we still order & rip the CD version if it’s available

Kind of wondering if there even will be a Best Buy in 2 years.

As for the Target part of the article, they're gradually remodeling the ones around here, adjusting the stores with floorplans had the Electronics Dept.* by the front entrance to a smaller spot in the back. There's a modular rack and half of a short aisle with an endcap rack of CDs in those stores now.

*Which these days is more of a Pop Culture Dept., with much shelf space once devoted to DVD/BluRay/CDs now housing Comic Book/Star Wars/Disney licensed merch (clothing, books, posters, Funko etc.).

it's been my impression that Best Buy has been doing better, esp online sales

they are actually better priced on a lot of stuff like tvs than Amazon

I just hope I can continue to buy CDs from somewhere going forward [(I mainly buy from the one independent shop near me (and Amazon, of course)].

Best Buy/Target has had a terrible CD selection for a decade plus in my neck of the woods.

this music dude who moved out upstairs last week left behind tons and tons of stuff in the giveaway pile. i gratefully took fifteen LPs, some 7"s, and a handful of DVDs that i'll watch once before passing them on. didn't touch the books - too much space per item. but i've been eerily fascinated by the CDs. hundreds and hundreds by artists big and small. things i would have snapped up for a dollar or five dollars back in the day if i found them at a thrift store or something. grandaddy, enon, 70s beach boys, all kinds of shit that's up my alley. i keep passing them in the foyer and there's a muscle memory that makes me want to browse through but, like, i don't collect CDs anymore. where would i even put them?

in your CD player!

hmmm well that will be the first problem

my who with the what now

superdrives are like $30 now

doesn’t count

I mean, arguably I have three computer drives that are “cd players” but I only ever rip CDs with them. I’ve got a PS4 but it’s hooked to an a/v setup I stream music to. I have a neat muji wall CD player that is decorative but I now very seldom use

so I’d say I do have one “cd player” in that the function I primarily use it for is to play compact discs, but it’s not even plugged in

actually my laptop does have a CD drive now that you mention it. feels so awkward and flimsy though and my computer's not plugged into the stereo so i really don't use it for listening.

"I’ve got a PS4 but it’s hooked to an a/v setup" I don't think ps4s play CDs either, from what I remember. maybe they've updated since the last time I tried this but they didn't a year ago which was baffling to me.

oh yeah there’s something weird about that, right?

What's the problem again