WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER I thought record store delete bins - sometimes referred to as cut-out bins - were the absolute greatest thing in the world. Flipping through them was like panning for gold, and I almost always found something worth salvaging. I’d rush home and plop it onto the record player my parents bought me for Christmas one year, a small, white plastic turntable with a couple of tiny, white plastic speakers tucked in underneath. I loved everything about my records, especially the artwork. Back then groups like Yes and Uriah Heep turned album covers into art-rock masterpieces. I’d sometimes buy a record just because of the cover artwork. My records not only looked good, they smelled good. Today everything’s digital, and digital doesn’t smell like anything unless your iPod overheats. But - unlike back in the day - I can now walk around with an unlimited number of songs in my pocket and not even know they’re there. Because, well, really - they’re not there. They’re more like song ghosts. The songs themselves are stored way up above in a cloud somewhere and can be summoned at anytime from anywhere with a phone screen finger swipe. It’s convenient, sure - I’d have needed a pickup truck to carry that much music around in the ‘70s - but something is missing. Actually, everything is missing. There’s literally nothing there: no artwork, no record - nothing. Today people hear a song they like, Shazam it and then download it while sitting on the toilet. It is possible to literally shit music in this modern age, whereas I used to have to really work to get my music. I had to invest the time and effort. I had to get out of bed and get dressed and go somewhere and dig through bins filled mostly with junk hoping to find something special. I never knew what I might find and the point is I earned my music.
All the records I found in delete bins over the years had the same thing in common: they’d all been vandalized. There was always a hole drilled through a corner, or maybe the corner had been cleaved off entirely or someone had pulled the plastic shrink-wrap off a corner and drawn a squiggle on the record’s cardboard sleeve with a thick-tipped marker. It was as if the record companies couldn’t stomach the fact that I was going to save a couple of bucks and decided it was necessary to physically damage the records in order to justify pasting the lower-priced stickers on them. They don’t do that to cars. When Ford has a Friends & Family sale they don’t go around to all the dealerships and dent the fenders of the cars with Friends and Family balloons tied to the antennas. But I didn’t care. I was just happy to get the cheaper music.
Decades on, however, it all of a sudden matters. For whatever reason, some of those delete bin records have become collectible. Be it scarcity, a misprint or the exceptional sound quality of a particular pressing - whatever the reason - some people are more than willing to spend considerable sums of their hard-earned money in order to acquire certain collectible records. But records that have been mutilated are worth a lot less. Mint condition is where the real money is, although a collectible record in truly mint condition is a very rare find indeed, especially if it's getting on in years. The Goldmine Standard for the Condition of Items in the Marketplace defines mint condition as “absolutely perfect in every way. Certainly never been played, possibly even still sealed. Should be used sparingly as a grade, if at all.” It’s an intentionally tight definition, meaning that Near Mint or Mint Minus is about as good as you’re going to find, and records that look as though they’ve had an ear shot off are not what most people would consider to be Near Mint condition. Plainly put, covers count. No matter what’s on the inside, unless it’s a really rare record and provided there’s nothing else wrong with it, most collectors have pretty much already made up their mind if there’s a defect on the cover.
Of course, none of this matters if you don’t intend to ever sell your records. I never bought a record thinking it might be an investment, but the fact is some of the records in my collection have performed considerably better than some stock market investments. But don’t get too excited. Don’t rush down into your basement thinking your copy of The Partridge Family At Home With Their Greatest Hits is going to fund your retirement. It isn’t. Most records aren’t worth much at all, but a few are and some of them, I was pleasantly surprised to learn, I actually owned. I discovered this by accident when I set about cataloguing my collection and entering the details of each record into a Discogs database. The collection needed to be organized. It had got to the point where I was buying records I already owned because I didn't know I already owned them, so I needed to know what records I had in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall shelves that were stuffed tight.
And in the piles on the floor in the dining room.
And in the boxes in the basement.
And in the two milk crates in the front hall closet that were full of show tunes, soundtracks and obscure classical music that had been dropped off by someone who didn’t want them anymore but didn’t want to throw them out, either. He just assumed I’d take them in, like he was dropping off an unwanted litter of kittens. And I did. How could I not?
Some records in my collection I’d forgotten about entirely, like the David Bowie box set on the Rykodisc label called Sound and Vision that I’d found in a delete bin about 15 years ago for something like five bucks. Six clear-vinyl LPs in a nice packaging - or what would have been nice packaging if someone hadn’t drilled a hole through the bottom right corner. But it was Bowie and it was only five bucks so what the hell. I bought it and took it home. But I never liked the sound of the records in that box. They are DMM - Direct Metal Mastered - which is where the mechanical audio modulation is cut straight into metal (usually copper) instead of onto a lacquer-coated aluminum disc, which is supposed to be better for some reason. I don't know if this process is partly responsible for how the records in this set sound, but the production is far too bright, as though the music has been specifically remastered for CD - which is how it was originally released - and then slapped onto vinyl as an afterthought to cash in on the latest record craze. "Let's DMM it so we can sell it to the audiophiles," somebody maybe said.
Mostly because of the way it sounded, that set got assigned to an out-of-the-way spot in the no-man’s land section on the record shelf and was quickly forgotten. Then a bunch of years passed, and the next time I laid hands on it was a few months ago when I pulled it off the shelf to enter it into the Discogs database. As I did so I was surprised to learn it had been out of print long enough and was now rare enough to have become a collectors’ item. And when I learned of its potential value - about $350 in Near Mint condition - I couldn’t get it out the door fast enough. I immediately took it to a used record store a friend of mine owned and traded it for a bunch of new records (not exactly the definition of downsizing, but it will make absolute perfect sense to another record collector). But I’d forgotten all about the hole in the bottom corner. It went right through David Bowie’s heart, the darkest part of the artwork on the front of the box, so it really was hard to see and I was surprised when the owner of the record store later told me about it. But as soon as he said it I remembered. "Oh, yeah," I thought. "The fucking hole! " He hadn't initially noticed it, either, and only discovered it on closer inspection after I’d traded it to him. He told me he didn’t think he’d be able to sell the set for what he’d given me in trade, but in the end he found a Bowie completist who lived halfway across the country and didn’t care about the hole. He had to have it. He probably wouldn’t see another one and the records themselves were, mostly, in unplayed condition. Record collectors are like that. We’ll buy stuff that doesn’t even sound good and has a hole drilled through it.
These days delete bins no longer exist. And record prices - even used record prices - have gone through the roof because it’s again suddenly become a fad to own records. The years 2015-16 were record years for record sales, pun intended. And 2017 set yet another record. But that doesn’t mean more records were sold in either of those years than in 1977. Nowhere near that many records were sold in the last three years combined. All it means is records now cost too much.
WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER I thought record store delete bins - sometimes referred to as cut-out bins - were the absolute greatest thing in the world. Flipping through them was like panning for gold, and I almost always found something worth salvaging. I’d rush home and plop it onto the record player my parents bought me for Christmas one year, a small, white plastic turntable with a couple of tiny, white plastic speakers tucked in underneath. I loved everything about my records, especially the artwork. Back then groups like Yes and Uriah Heep turned album covers into art-rock masterpieces. I’d sometimes buy a record just because of the cover artwork. My records not only looked good, they smelled good. Today everything’s digital, and digital doesn’t smell like anything unless your iPod overheats. But - unlike back in the day - I can now walk around with an unlimited number of songs in my pocket and not even know they’re there. Because, well, really - they’re not there. They’re more like song ghosts. The songs themselves are stored way up above in a cloud somewhere and can be summoned at anytime from anywhere with a phone screen finger swipe. It’s convenient, sure - I’d have needed a pickup truck to carry that much music around in the ‘70s - but something is missing. Actually, everything is missing. There’s literally nothing there: no artwork, no record - nothing. Today people hear a song they like, Shazam it and then download it while sitting on the toilet. It is possible to literally shit music in this modern age, whereas I used to have to really work to get my music. I had to invest the time and effort. I had to get out of bed and get dressed and go somewhere and dig through bins filled mostly with junk hoping to find something special. I never knew what I might find and the point is I earned my music.
All the records I found in delete bins over the years had the same thing in common: they’d all been vandalized. There was always a hole drilled through a corner, or maybe the corner had been cleaved off entirely or someone had pulled the plastic shrink-wrap off a corner and drawn a squiggle on the record’s cardboard sleeve with a thick-tipped marker. It was as if the record companies couldn’t stomach the fact that I was going to save a couple of bucks and decided it was necessary to physically damage the records in order to justify pasting the lower-priced stickers on them. They don’t do that to cars. When Ford has a Friends & Family sale they don’t go around to all the dealerships and dent the fenders of the cars with Friends and Family balloons tied to the antennas. But I didn’t care. I was just happy to get the cheaper music.
Decades on, however, it all of a sudden matters. For whatever reason, some of those delete bin records have become collectible. Be it scarcity, a misprint or the exceptional sound quality of a particular pressing - whatever the reason - some people are more than willing to spend considerable sums of their hard-earned money in order to acquire certain collectible records. But records that have been mutilated are worth a lot less. Mint condition is where the real money is, although a collectible record in truly mint condition is a very rare find indeed, especially if it's getting on in years. The Goldmine Standard for the Condition of Items in the Marketplace defines mint condition as “absolutely perfect in every way. Certainly never been played, possibly even still sealed. Should be used sparingly as a grade, if at all.” It’s an intentionally tight definition, meaning that Near Mint or Mint Minus is about as good as you’re going to find, and records that look as though they’ve had an ear shot off are not what most people would consider to be Near Mint condition. Plainly put, covers count. No matter what’s on the inside, unless it’s a really rare record and provided there’s nothing else wrong with it, most collectors have pretty much already made up their mind if there’s a defect on the cover.
Of course, none of this matters if you don’t intend to ever sell your records. I never bought a record thinking it might be an investment, but the fact is some of the records in my collection have performed considerably better than some stock market investments. But don’t get too excited. Don’t rush down into your basement thinking your copy of The Partridge Family At Home With Their Greatest Hits is going to fund your retirement. It isn’t. Most records aren’t worth much at all, but a few are and some of them, I was pleasantly surprised to learn, I actually owned. I discovered this by accident when I set about cataloguing my collection and entering the details of each record into a Discogs database. The collection needed to be organized. It had got to the point where I was buying records I already owned because I didn't know I already owned them, so I needed to know what records I had in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall shelves that were stuffed tight.
And in the piles on the floor in the dining room.
And in the boxes in the basement.
And in the two milk crates in the front hall closet that were full of show tunes, soundtracks and obscure classical music that had been dropped off by someone who didn’t want them anymore but didn’t want to throw them out, either. He just assumed I’d take them in, like he was dropping off an unwanted litter of kittens. And I did. How could I not?
Some records in my collection I’d forgotten about entirely, like the David Bowie box set on the Rykodisc label called Sound and Vision that I’d found in a delete bin about 15 years ago for something like five bucks. Six clear-vinyl LPs in a nice packaging - or what would have been nice packaging if someone hadn’t drilled a hole through the bottom right corner. But it was Bowie and it was only five bucks so what the hell. I bought it and took it home. But I never liked the sound of the records in that box. They are DMM - Direct Metal Mastered - which is where the mechanical audio modulation is cut straight into metal (usually copper) instead of onto a lacquer-coated aluminum disc, which is supposed to be better for some reason. I don't know if this process is partly responsible for how the records in this set sound, but the production is far too bright, as though the music has been specifically remastered for CD - which is how it was originally released - and then slapped onto vinyl as an afterthought to cash in on the latest record craze. "Let's DMM it so we can sell it to the audiophiles," somebody maybe said.
Mostly because of the way it sounded, that set got assigned to an out-of-the-way spot in the no-man’s land section on the record shelf and was quickly forgotten. Then a bunch of years passed, and the next time I laid hands on it was a few months ago when I pulled it off the shelf to enter it into the Discogs database. As I did so I was surprised to learn it had been out of print long enough and was now rare enough to have become a collectors’ item. And when I learned of its potential value - about $350 in Near Mint condition - I couldn’t get it out the door fast enough. I immediately took it to a used record store a friend of mine owned and traded it for a bunch of new records (not exactly the definition of downsizing, but it will make absolute perfect sense to another record collector). But I’d forgotten all about the hole in the bottom corner. It went right through David Bowie’s heart, the darkest part of the artwork on the front of the box, so it really was hard to see and I was surprised when the owner of the record store later told me about it. But as soon as he said it I remembered. "Oh, yeah," I thought. "The fucking hole! " He hadn't initially noticed it, either, and only discovered it on closer inspection after I’d traded it to him. He told me he didn’t think he’d be able to sell the set for what he’d given me in trade, but in the end he found a Bowie completist who lived halfway across the country and didn’t care about the hole. He had to have it. He probably wouldn’t see another one and the records themselves were, mostly, in unplayed condition. Record collectors are like that. We’ll buy stuff that doesn’t even sound good and has a hole drilled through it.
These days delete bins no longer exist. And record prices - even used record prices - have gone through the roof because it’s again suddenly become a fad to own records. The years 2015-16 were record years for record sales, pun intended. And 2017 set yet another record. But that doesn’t mean more records were sold in either of those years than in 1977. Nowhere near that many records were sold in the last three years combined. All it means is records now cost too much.
FROM THE CBC, DEC. 10, 2006
Delete bins weren't the only place to find great deals. But for every buyer there has to be a seller. Thinking of selling your old records on eBay or at a flea market? Here's a cautionary tale.
The first recording by The Velvet Underground has sold for $155,406 US on eBay, earning a sizeable profit for the Montreal man who bought it at a flea market for 75 cents.
Bidding reached a fever pitch when the 12-inch acetate album was put on the online auction site on Nov. 28. The first bids hit $20,000 US and climbed until the final bid - the equivalent of $179,876 Cdn - on Friday night.
The buyer is still a mystery, identified by the eBay name "mechadaddy. The new owner will not be able to re-release the music, which is protected by copyright.
Warren Hill is the collector from Montreal who bought the record bearing the inscription "The Velvet Underground 5-25-66" in September, 2002 at a junk sale in Manhattan. When he and a friend cued up the record to listen, they heard a version of the band's European Son they'd never heard before.
"It's in relatively good condition considering the age and fragility of acetate material," said Hill, who adds that he's not a fan of the experimental band.
Hill runs his own record store in Montreal and says that he has no desire to keep what some consider a vital piece of rock history. The band, which included singer Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, was known for its avant-garde influences.They were taken under the wing of artist Andy Warhol, who suggested they use the German singer, Nico.
The in-studio acetate was made during the Velvet Underground's first recording session over four days in April, 1966, at New York's Scepter Studios. It is reportedly only one of two in existence. The other copy is said to be in the hands of the band's drummer, Maureen Tucker.
"They re-recorded three songs at a later date at a studio in Los Angeles," said Hill, who notes the songs Heroin and Waiting For The Man - as well as European Son - are slightly different from what's on the official album.
The Velvet Underground and Nico was released in 1967, also featuring such classics as Venus In Furs, Femme Fatale and I'll Be Your Mirror.
The album only sold 50,000 copies at the time. Rolling Stone magazine has since named it the 13th greatest rock album of all time.
