Occasionally when record digging you find yourself in unfamiliar territory. For me, one area of uncharted waters is vinyl singles… 7″ 45 RPM records. I just don’t care about them!
- I’ll never play them. It’s hassle enough to get up every 22 minutes or so and flip an LP. Every 3 minutes? Too much work.
- I don’t collect them so I’d have to become a record re-seller, list each individual 45, vouch for its grade and ship them out to those that do collect them. See the word “hassle” above.
- I don’t own a jukebox, or even one of those iconic 45 adapters for my TT, so I couldn’t really listen to the things even if I wanted to.
- Most that I see are a sleeveless, grungy mess! I don’t want to spend time cleaning that!
Then, all at once, I’m in my favorite thrift. Right by the checkout is an entire shopping cart of 45s! $1.00 each. I do a cursory dig and find many well known artists from the 50s through the 80s with picture sleeves. Prince, Bon Jovi, Olivia Newton John, etc. I amass a pile of a dozen or so when it dawns on me; “hey, this might be good fodder for record store credit!”
I ask the supervisor at the checkout what she would take for the whole lot. Without missing a beat she says “$20”. Sold! Then, she turns to a young volunteer at her side and says; “go out back and get that other shopping cart of records for this gentleman.” Bonus! Two shopping carts of 45s for a single $20 bill.
Today we took what we wanted, boxed the rest up and traded them in for a cool $40 at the local record store Groove Merchants.
There is a local street fair in this neighborhood this weekend. He’s planning on selling these things four for $1 or some such thing. I made out OK, I hope he makes a mint and I hope that whoever comes across these and loads up for their jukebox is happy. A win, win, win… that’s what it is all about!