I’ve actually done this kind of thing before. I saved a really old family audio recording that had only one more play in it before it disintegrated, and I’ve done a few other surgeries for other reasons, too. It’s fun for a short time, but in the end it is more about listening than tinkering because there is only so much one can do.
I understand people liking cassettes, I still do, but not enough to collect, listen to, or tinker with anymore. The same goes for VHS.
I do miss picking up a pack of cassettes, especially a good brand, quality, or tape length. Especially if they were on sale, I’d get the new newspaper first thing on Sunday morning and see what cassettes were on sale in the ads. That was a big deal!
I liked cheaper tapes, too, which suited my purposes and allowed me to record more things. Walgreens had these really cheap tapes that worked really well. Scotch was a nice in-between brand, I’d get those at Target. The feel of the plastic cases was so nice.
I have a lot of different Brandenburg Concerto recordings, because it is: 1 – Great. 2 – Everywhere. 3 – Cheap. 4 – Bach. The complete recordings cover two discs, so often I’ll find 1-2-3 and need 4-5-6, that kind of thing. I ran across the 1-2-3 that I needed in this case, and had to create a cover so that it would be one complete recording in iTunes/Music, and not two separate cds. I don’t see any need for that in iTunes/Music.
So, of course I have two new versions of the cover, a version similar to the originals, and one that I feel is a bit better.
I updated my iTunes a month ago, coincidentally, so that almost all of my Brandenburgs are in my iTunes/Music. (not everything I have is in there; every cd that I own is ripped and digitized, but not necessarily imported into iTunes/Music.) I am slowly going over the big compositions or artists, and making sure that they are complete. Quite a bit of work, like digitizing and improving family photos, I’m easily never going to be done!
Brand-new, in the shrink-wrap, for a dollar. A 2021 release of a 1995 recording. The thrift store I found this at still has more than twenty copies. How can this be? It sounds fantastic, and covers some of my favorite Bach.
Quite rare to find box sets like this at a busy thrift store like the ARC; even more rare is all twenty-five (ten+fifteen) of the discs were perfect and present; Even more curious is that I wasn’t sure what I was getting, I don’t know much about Sacred Works, and the Haydn Quartets were old, but remastered recordings. I’m not one for bad sound, even if the actual performance is highly regarded.
Turns out that the Sacred Works are basically small choir compositions, something that I’ve recently very much gotten into; the Haydn Quartets sound fine, there is better sound, but they are quite listenable for being recorded in the early-mid 1950s. So, my three-dollar (for both boxes!) gamble really paid off!
I found another “Residence” cd, I don’t see many of these in the thrifts. My original two, of which I listened to quite a bit, I bought new back in the 1990s, and they weren’t cheap back then. Now, they are just a buck or two, if they can be found.
The booklet lists twenty total, so I’m halfway to a full set!
This little “Residence” collection is nothing; I have a friend who put together a complete set of one hundred recordings (Sony: Leonard Bernstein: The Royal Edition) just from shopping thrifts for years. That is the feat to beat in classical music thrifting!
The one time I don’t check the condition of a cd before I buy it at the thrift store… even worse is that the other cd in the set (Vivaldi: Four Seasons) is fine, so… half of the music is there.
The good thing is that I have many different recordings of this piece, so at least it isn’t some rare recording. Still disappointing.
This cd set was anywhere from $10-$24 new back in the day, and I bought both cds for a buck.
Found a few things for next-to-nothing that were very new, such as three expensive, recent books, and two newer classical cds… usually classical cds are rare after the year 2000, but today I found two of them, one was 2011 and the other, 2019! I don’t think I’ve ever found a classical cd that new, and it was also a double-cd, and of a very appealing nature, Bach transcriptions for piano! Amazing that I was able to find it.
I have three general kinds of cd categories when I go to thrifts: 1 – The older, cheap, generic collections or releases. 2 – The big, or boutique labels up to the year 2000. 3 – Any non-generic post 2000. (The most rare to find at a thrift)
If one goes to Amazon, most of the cds there are exactly what doesn’t make the thrifts, and never will. Anything new isn’t out in enough volume anymore to be found. I’m thinking it is a better use of time to get box sets, that package cds into more compact forms of storage, are far cheaper as a box set per cd, and are all new and clean. Plus, you know what you are going to find, wheras thrift stores, the case could be broken, most are scuffed up or have cracks in them, and the cds could be immaculate, but easily, not immaculate. And you never know what you are going to get. Trying to piece together an entire set, or artist’s complete work… that is an ongoing task that is often never completed.
The John Williams collection is from 2011, and has three discs for the price of one! For one dollar!
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But, if I’m at a thrift, it doesn’t hurt to pick out the few gems that might be there. At a dollar apiece, the price is right!
As for the books, one of them was from last year and sold for thirty dollars new! There are no bad selections here, as usual. The Diary of Vikenty Angarov is the oldest book I bought, and one I’m never going to see in the wild again; these memoirs of former Gulag or other death camps are always of intense interest. The Endurance is a true story recommended to me about a year ago, and this book has a lot of really good photos, of which I am surprised they survived considering what all of those explorers went through.
Hero of Two Worlds is about Lafayette, a guy who is always overlooked when I read about the American Revolution. It looks to be a smooth and very interesting read.
