Tag Archives: hobbies - Page 5

The Next Collector’s Goal

Posted by anachostic on July 11, 2019 No comments

It was almost five years ago that I made a concerted effort to collect the entirety of a music label, the MCA Master Series. The Master Series is a collection of largely instrumental “new age” music from the late 80’s. For a little while now, I’ve been kicking around the idea of trying this again with another label. I’m going to make a start on it now.

The label this time is IRS NoSpeak. It’s another instrumental label from the same time period. The label considered themselves “anti-new age” in the sense it was much more rock-oriented. The scope of the collection is much smaller, with MCA having been 40+ releases, this label is only 19 strong. With the price of CDs being depressed across the board, plus having these CDs never really reaching a large audience outside of individual fan groups, these should be obtainable for a reasonable cost.

It’s kind of funny that with as much as I shop at thrift stores and get CDs for a buck or two, shopping online is actually a little unreasonable. When you have to pay $3-4 for shipping on a $3-5 cd, that money can get you a good haul at a thrift store. But when you want something specific, your chances of finding what you want in a random thrift store are pretty slim, so you gotta pay.

My history with the IRS NoSpeak label is pretty limited, and honestly, I don’t like most of what I already have. But what I do like, I really like, so I’m hoping that I can find some winners again. I did find some amazing stuff as I built my MCA collection, so maybe this good fortune will happen again.

The first album I got on the NoSpeak label was their first release, Guitar and Son, which was a guitar-based album. Every time I hear it, I’m taken back to the days when I’d be playing the CD on repeat, over and over, while reading the monstrous Computer Shopper magazine and dreaming of getting back into computers again. Those were simpler, happier times.

Maybe when the collection is complete, I’ll do the same as I did with the Master Series and make a set of pages for them here on the blog. The album artwork is nice, although of a much different style than the Master Series. It might be suitable for framing.

Current stats: 6 on hand, 3 on order, 10 remaining.

I Made It Work Again

Posted by anachostic on April 30, 2019 No comments

Over the weekend, I made a roadtrip in the interest of thrift shopping. It was a generally easy-going, low-stress trip that turned up plenty of CDs, mostly smooth-sided cases. Along the way, I also picked up an early CD player, 30 years old, for $7. I figured it would be interesting to have an opportunity to experience newer and older players and see if I could determine sonic differences between them. The price was good, so why not?

When I got it home and fired it up, I found out why not. It wasn’t operational. When powered up, it would immediately eject the CD tray. Pushing the close button did nothing. If you pulled the tray out a little further, the close button would work, but after a second or two, the tray would eject again. Huh.

My first thought was that there were some sensors that were dirty. The ones that tell the player when the tray is fully opened or fully closed. It seemed like something I could fix. So I opened the case and disassembled the tray assembly. I didn’t really see any sensors like I expected. I did see a pressure switch that would toggle when the drawer was open or closed. Opening and closing the drawer, I could see that when closing, the switch was not being contacted. I think I was on the right track here.

Considering why the drawer wouldn’t close fully, I had a memory of a web page I had read about CD player troubleshooting and the primary takeaway was that the great majority of player failures can be fixed by replacing the drive belts. I inspected the drawer assembly and found only a single belt. It seemed to be in good condition, maybe a little loose, I don’t really know. But I figured I could change it out easily and maybe that would do it.

I ordered a pack of various sized belts from Amazon and they arrived the next day. Without too much trouble, I installed a new belt of near the same size, maybe a little smaller. The reassembly was a little sketchy since I wasn’t exactly sure where to set the gear so that the open/closed pressure switch would get hit in both directions. But for my first test, the drawer stayed closed when I powered on, which it should because the switch indicated the door was closed. I pushed the open/close button and the drawer ejected. I checked the switch and it indicated the drawer was fully open. I pushed the open/close button again at the drawer closed. Then I saw something I hadn’t seen in previous attempts: the laser lens moved up and down trying to focus on a non-existent CD. And the drawer stayed closed. I ejected the tray and put a CD in. I closed the tray and the CD spun up. I pressed play, the CD spun and the display counted up the time. I fixed it!

That’s a plenty good feeling to repair something so easily, just a single part replacement and the part was a tiny piece of rubber.

The State Of Collecting

Posted by anachostic on January 11, 2019 No comments

When I started collecting seriously in 2015, I had about 620 CDs. Some people would say that’s a lot. I remember in the 90’s, I started really building my collection by visiting pawn shops. CDs were usually $5 each. Now, they are $1-2 each at thrift shops. The low cost allows me to indulge in albums I wouldn’t have taken a chance on at $5.

I say that I started collecting “seriously” in 2015 because that is when I started tracking my collection online with Discogs. From that point onward, I am able to see when I added more to my collection. The online site doesn’t give any statistics over time, but they do allow you to download your collection for you to analyze yourself. I’m no Excel guru, so although I tried to create some pretty pictures and graphs, I was unable to get anything that was suitable.

In 2016, I added 207 CDs. Looking through the filtered list, some additions catch my eye. This is the year I got a couple of holiday CDs from a secret santa. It’s the year I first heard Kraftwerk, one of those legendarily influential groups you should hear. In fact, that was probably when I started really trying to experience “the legends” when up to that point, they were out of my normal musical orbit. Some other artists that I’d never owned before, notable and not, include: Vince Guaraldi, Steely Dan, Eurythmics, Laurie Anderson, Cyndi Lauper, and The Pretenders.

In 2017, I added 254 CDs. I was more actively seeking out sources for cheap CDs. I would hit thrift shops and flea markets on a regular basis. I learned that some thrift shops didn’t really have the turnover that others did, so some places had to be hit weekly and others could be visited less frequently. I was also visiting my local record store for the more elusive titles, which came at a premium price. Some new artists from this year: Madonna, Autograph, Roxette, Loverboy, Billy Ocean, Pointer Sisters, Billy Squier.

In 2018, I added 327 CDs. My local record store had moved father away, so I was spending more time at thrift shops and travelling longer distances for flea markets. I was also discovering other sources for CDs. ReStore by Habitat For Humanity was a newer discovery. Antique malls and indoor flea markets were another. The latter were good sources as they were usually personal collections being sold. Some of the new artists this year: Testament, Exodus, Dio, Krokus, Black Sabbath, Mercyful Fate (good time for metal), Adam Ant, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Level 42, Aretha Franklin, Annie Lennox, Bruce Springsteen.

All of the purchase counts are exclusive of the duplicate CDs that I bought. Usually they were upgrades to existing CDs I already had – maybe a foreign pressing, maybe an earlier pressing, maybe a target CD. In 2018, I sold off 80 of those CDs to a local store. I have about 30 queued up again.

Is it weird that I am adding to my collection every year a quantity that exceeds most peoples entire collection? Maybe. But as in just about any sort of addictive hobby, there will always be examples of those much worse than yourself. I mean, I have 1500 CDs, but there are people out there with 10x as many. I’m not even sure I have enough musical interest to span 10,000 CDs. Since my music tastes only span a couple of decades, that should keep me from going full hoarder. One collector posted his collection of 40k CDs and it consumed the entire wallspace of two adjoining rooms, plus multiple island cabinets in the middle of one room. He also said he just returned from a trip to a couple of stores and bought over 160 more CDs. So, it’s not as bad as it could be.

Another Brick In The Closet

Posted by anachostic on September 6, 2018 No comments

Last year, before the holidays, I found a nice, massive keyboard sitting unloved at a thrift store. I assume it was still sitting there because anyone that tested it would have found it to be broken. I, however, am foolish enough to buy things without any consideration of functionality. So I brought this keyboard home, discovered it was broken, and proceeded to fix it up enough to make it work. And it’s been sitting in my closet ever since, waiting for its moment of glory.

On this most recent holiday, I saw something else at a thrift shop – a nice, tiny keyboard. The price was right, so I bought it – untested as is my way. As soon as I got the device to the car, I realized it was broken. One of the controller knobs was completely snapped off. Oh well. The price was right. Let’s get it home and see if it even powers up and makes noise.

I got it home and it powered up and made no sound. Well, it made a buzzing sound, sometimes. I started doing some online research and learned that this particular synth has a well known issue with that control knob failing (not sure if being broken off is considered “failing”). So replacements are generally easy to get. At this point, I don’t even know if that’s the actual problem. But let’s take a step back and look at this thing.

This little bugger is the Alesis Micron, which is an analog modeling synthesizer. It originally sold for $400 back in 2004. It still sells for about $200 on the used market. I got it for $7.50, half-off the original $15 price. So you see, it was worth the gamble. I’ve spent far more on far less (which should be my life’s motto).

When I saw “analog modeling synthesizer” on it, I got really excited. The only synth of that type I’d really known about before dropping out of the music scene was the Nord Modular, which I remember being a 4-figure keyboard. These types of keyboards emulate the older synths of the 70s and 80s. and they typically do it very well. They also have a lot of the features of older synths like arpeggiators (for playing Who Are You) and vocoders (for playing Mr. Blue Sky). There is a video on Youtube of someone playing Mr. Mister’s Kyrie live and solo on the Micron. But before I can have that kind of fun, this device needs repair.

I have a couple of options. I can just replace the knob (a potentiometer, if you want to sound cool), which requires some soldering work. The part costs less than $2 (plus shipping), and of course, I’ll need a new knob button to cap it off. Yeah, that’s one option, or I can buy a whole new control board with knob for $40. That’s the plug and play option and the one I opted for. That and the cap were about $50, so if this works out, I will have a really neat new synth for a little under $60. And then, it can sit in my closet, too. How stupid.

It is dumb, but I have a lot of fun rescuing junk and making it (or trying to make it) usable. I should consider myself fortunate this desire is just for musical equipment and not, say, cats.

The parts are currently being shipping and I should have them next week. Let’s hope I have as much success with this little Alesis as I did with the huge Alesis.

The Superior Feeling

Posted by anachostic on August 18, 2018 No comments

To somewhat paraphrase that Shania Twain chorus, “God, I feel like a God today.” I’ve mentioned before that being a programmer is the best thing in the world and it’s the closest you can get to being a god. Parents, you may think you get to play god, too, but there’s a little issue with deleting your creations when you’re done with them. So, being a programmer is still the best.

I’ve mentioned before that one of the best things about programming is the ability to automate. Taking what would be an insurmountable task and making it simple. And that is what I managed to do today. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve set up a music server in the house, Plex, and in prior posts, I’ve talked about my digital music collection. Occasionally, I mention that the metadata in the files needs improvement. And that is also what I’ve done.

Metadata in digital files can be as extensive as you want them to be. At a minimum, you want the artist and song title to be in there, because most players display that important identifying information. You can go further and add the album release year and genre, so you can sort and group things that are of similar values. You can go further still and embed artwork in the file, usually the album cover, so your music player can display that, too. You can go even further than that and put the lyrics for the song in the metadata so some players will show you the lyrics while the song plays. That is where I am at and it is what I have done.

There are utilities that let you edit the metadata directly, so you can create a new tag and paste in the lyrics for a song. But, is that even fathomable to do with over 15,000 songs? There are tools that will let you look up the lyrics to a song and create the tag automatically, but still, song by song. I never got to the point of finding utilities that would process a whole album at one time, because I realized I could do it better. I could do it exactly as I needed it to be done.

With Plex, there is no support for embedded lyrics in the metadata. Instead, they use what’s called a “side-car” file, which is the same file name, but different extension. So you have your .flac file and a duplicate .txt file with the lyrics. Ok, that’s pretty crappy, but I can do it. But, if I’m going to go through the trouble of getting all these lyric files, why not embed them at the same time?

So I did a quick search online and found a code library that would read and write FLAC metadata. That’s the only thing I couldn’t do on my own, so I was golden now. I learned of a website that had a simple means of downloading lyrics through their website, as long as I stripped out everything else from the webpage. A simple RegEx statement accomplished that. Writing to a text file, recursing through directories, all that is simple stuff.

So, I process each artist in a batch, which enumerates all songs for all albums. One button click to retrieve all the lyrics for all the songs, then a review of any songs that had no matches. Correct the titles for the non-matches and get lyrics again. Then a button to process the lyrics which both embeds the lyrics in the FLAC files and also creates a sidecar text file with the lyrics. So, if all goes well, one double-click on the artist folder, click on Retrieve Lyrics, scroll to confirm that all lyrics came in, click Process.

So, yeah, I do have to process a little over 500 artists, but that is substantially better than thousands of albums or many thousands of songs.

KATT Radio – Late Night Jazz

Posted by anachostic on July 24, 2018 No comments

My CD collection is pretty large right now. I’ve surpassed 1200 albums and I’m not sure there’s ever going to be an end to the growth. Sometimes, the realization of this prompts some soul-searching and the question comes up, “why?” Yes, why do I do this? What is the actual goal? There is no real goal, it’s just an ongoing feeling of happiness, tending my collection like a garden. But sometimes, the thought sneaks in, “That’s a lot of stuff to have. You can only listen to one CD at a time.”

That’s right. It is a lot of stuff for such a limited use. It’s too bad I couldn’t share the awesomeness of it all with people. And that thought led me down a path that ended up with me considering another potentially obsessive hobby – running a radio station! You can get low-power AM radio station licenses pretty cheaply. I started thinking up radio programs and what kind of expenses would come along with such an idea. Everyone knows there’s no live radio now and all DJs pre-program their sets in advance. I could easily do that, right? No one really wants to hear my voice, so it wouldn’t be a banter kind of station, just music. Hell, anyone can create a playlist, right? That’s all a radio station is anymore.

But that idea faded as I thought about the reality of trying to make enough music shows (I mean playlists) to keep the station interesting (as I daydream about upending my local radio stations… ha). So I considered an easier route: An Internet radio station. And I researched that and found I could get licensing for about $60/mo, and the licensing software would integrate with some common radio software. I looked in the radio DJ software and immediately felt less enthusiastic. It’s like my dilemma when I want to do music. You have to master this software before you can actually start a project. And by the time you understand how, you don’t care anymore.

At the same time I was kicking around this idea of broadcasting in my mind, I was pursuing another thought. The idea that I had all this music doing nothing was nagging at me a little. I do rip all of my CDs to my home computer (sitting at about 430GB right now) for playback at my desk. And the idea that I could only really play it at my desk was a slight annoyance. That’s a lot of music to sit there and do nothing. So I gave consideration to how to broadcast it. It would be a nice start to have devices throughout my home that could play my ripped music. It would be even cooler if I could play it from my phone, anywhere.

As it turns out, there is such a way to do it. Actually there’s plenty of ways to do it. And the idea wasn’t all that new to me. Back in my Zune days, there was a way to have Zune broadcast your music and videos to an XBox. And I was actually sort of on board with that. But since I never actually went through with buying an XBox and pursuing the “media center” dream, I had to reconsider my options. As it turns out, the old XBox software grew up and broke its dependency on XBox. That software is now called Plex. And this software will broadcast to all kinds of devices, near and far. Lots of people use Plex to share their music and videos with their friends. That’s pretty cool, whether legal or not.

So I installed Plex on my home computer and had it go to town on my music library. It grabbed a ton of info on my albums and artists from last.fm and it was flexible enough to let me edit anything left over on my own. I went out to my living room and installed the Plex client on my Samsung TV. It worked, which was impressive. What wasn’t impressive was my TV’s sound quality. So, I wrote the experiment off as useless.

Fast forward to today, I was dealing with cat issues. My new cat has millennial-grade anxiety about everything. Every sound freaks him out. He hid under a bed for days, leading me to think he was dying. But in the short time I’ve had him, I’ve discovered he likes music – a lot. He likes a lot of the new age, smooth jazz instrumental music I like. So I thought I would start playing it while I was out of the house, maybe to keep him chilled out. I was getting ready to grab a Sansa Clip MP3 player and was sort of dreading all the work that would go along with that. The player needs charged, I have to choose the music to play, the music has to be transcoded to fit onto the Clip, there won’t be a lot of music on there. This was going to suck. But wait, I have my entire music library available to stream to my TV. And I doubt the cat is going to be overly picky about the sound quality…

So I popped back on the living room TV and this time installed the Plex client for the Roku. It installed quickly and I was off and browsing my collection. I chose Acoustic Alchemy, which was the music he had heard on his transport to my house. I played all tracks from all albums on shuffle. And it just worked. My TV has a video mode where you can turn the screen off and just use the audio, so I didn’t have to worry about screen burn-in. I think I have a solution here.

I came back from dinner and the cat was not hiding under a bed, so I consider the music plan a success. I will try again tomorrow while I’m at work and see how well that works. And in time, I can build a huge playlist of instrumental songs for him – his own radio station.

The (Sea) Eagle Has Landed

Posted by anachostic on June 9, 2018 No comments

It was many years ago, in 2012, that I started the hobby of kayaking. I was fresh into a new relationship and had experienced kayaking for the first time. It was pretty clear that tandem kayaking was probably not going to work out for us. That meant I needed my own kayak in which to isolate my terrible paddling technique.

As luck would have it, Woot was selling inflatable kayaks at a pretty good price, so I bought some. Two is some, right? I did the research and these kayaks, by Sea Eagle, were pretty well respected. Obviously they had their detractors – those who would never use anything but a solid kayak. But, there are a lot of conveniences to be had with these inflatables. The most important is that I could transport it in my MX-5. Not only that, but I could transport both of them.

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Years have gone by, and I’ve been wanting an upgraded version of the Sea Eagle. I find it very odd they have such a good entry level model at a reasonable price, $200, but if you want the real deal, the model that really earns its keep, the price is over $1000. There’s nothing you can do in-between? Damn.

So I watched and waited. Actually, I let CamelCamelCamel do the watching. When I created the watch, the Sea Eagle model I wanted was a little over $1000. I set my target price at $850. And I got nothing, for almost a year. I had nearly completely forgotten about the watch when I got an email notification that the kayak was now being sold for $822, and that was the cheapest it had ever been.

Part of me wanted to sit back and think about it. The other part of me went to Amazon and saw there were only two left in stock. There’s a lot of expenses that have suddenly crept up on me lately, so I couldn’t justify buying two of these, so I just bought one. The next day, I went back and the price on the remaining one had gone up slightly to $835, so I guess I did the right thing. A few days later, that one remaining kayak was up to $913, so, yes, I think I did do the right thing. However, that’s not the cheapest I’ve ever seen them. Woot, of all places, once sold the Fast Track model in the $600 range. Now that’s a great deal.

The package arrived a couple of days earlier than the the initial tracking estimated. The box was compact and heavy, just as I remember my other kayaks arriving.

I inflated it to get an idea of how it compared to my original Sea Eagles. There is no comparison.

Where the SE330 hugs your sides, the 385FT gives you plenty of width. The floor in the FastTrack is firm and has little give. The material on the FastTrack is substantial and much less pliant. I’m left it inflated overnight to let it sort of stretch out. And of course identify and potential leaks. It was fine for days (because I’m lazy).

I have yet to take the craft out, but I am eager to try it out this year.

So, Are YOU A Collector? Clearly Not.

Posted by anachostic on April 12, 2018 No comments

As I posted recently, I went on a CD safari and ended returning with 20 CDs. 15 of those were purchased from two flea market vendors, both of whom said they were collectors.

In the first booth I went to, I felt I was in a hurry for time, so I scanned the discs very quickly, looking for smooth cases. However, I saw one CD that I had scored on my last flea market trip that was a valuable find. The CD wasn’t in a a smooth case (actually a shitty, flimsy case), so I was curious what a normal edition of that album looked like. When I opened the case, I was surprised. Similar to my previous reaction to finding gold, I said, “Oh, it’s a red-faced Polydor. Nice.”

Only a real geek would say “a red-faced Polydor”, right? That’s a statement that would come out of the mouth of an orthinologist. Like, you should log that in a bird-watching book along with the time and location. But, I didn’t log it, I bought it. WHY? I already had one and it was a valuable one at that! Sometimes, you can’t explain these things to collectors. Different is good.

When I got home and cleaned the CDs all up, I researched what I had purchased. Now you may recall the post about my $300 find for $3. Well, this time, I paid $5, and wouldn’t you know it? Someone has paid over $500 for this CD.

I now have both of these CDs. What’s the difference? 100% appearance. These are the two CDs. They have the same music.

And when I say they have the same music, I checked. They DO. I posted this on Relative Waves. It’s the same.

That’s two waveforms overlaid on each other. There’s no green or white peeking out anywhere. That means no differences. SAME SAME SAME.

Anyway. So now I have a new most valuable CD. Again, by a large margin. In fact, my collection value went up by over $1000 from this last trip. After all, I did find a bunch of other rarities.

Safari 2018

Posted by anachostic on April 8, 2018 No comments

A little over a year ago, I went on a CD hunt, and I recently chose to indulge myself again. This time, I would travel to a remote metro city with a whole new, fresh collection of thrift shops to plunder. The trip would be two hours to get there (and coincidentally, two hours to get back). But that’s quite ok, because driving is something I do. The MX-5 has 263k miles on it right now and shows no sign of giving up.

I plan on making a couple of alterations to the car before this road trip. The first is removal of the Zune integration with the stereo. It’s been fun, but as time wore on, and Zune support in Windows went away, it’s less of a thing now for me. I’ve gotten back into CDs, which seen to have more fidelity than the Zune audio pumped through a 3.5mm cable, even when the files are lossless.

While I have things disassembled, I also plan to implement the traffic power cable for my GPS and hide the ugly bits behind the dash. Right now, I have a frankencable coming up from my center console and up the dash. It doesn’t provide a traffic antenna for the GPS and said GPS bitches about every single time I start it up. It will be nice to be rid of that stupid alert and also to have the traffic info for better routing. This will involve purchasing an add-on 12v socket that I’ll hide behind the dash and plug the GPS power cable into it. I can’t understand why they don’t design GPS power cables to be plug-in or hard-wired. Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve torn the interior of my car apart. I used to do it on a monthly basis.

And then, a trip like this is something that must be done solo. I can’t imagine the mind-numbing boredom of sitting in a car as a passenger for hours on end, then slogging around dingy shops for a full day. I have a list of 20 locations to hit in the remote area, including one bona-fide music store. I’m not sure if I will have time to hit the flea market while I’m there, but I’ll certainly try.

Friday after work, I spent a couple of hours fighting in the car, routing the power cable for the GPS and removing old audio stuff. That was a success, or so I thought until I went out for dinner that night. Now I have an alternator whine in my front right speaker, so I’m going to have to take the dash all apart again and be a bit more cautious with my power cable and audio cable routing. Worse, it means my Saturday trip (two hours each way) will be in silence. Oh fucking no.

I headed out early in the morning and made it to the flea market just as it opened. I found two large CD sellers and spent more than I usually would at a flea market. I paid more per CD, but I think I got some good items. (Wait for the post on this. You have no idea!)

The rest of the day was pretty sad compared to the flea market. Many thrift shops were closed or out of business. The music store I went to had outrageous prices, like $8 for used CDs, and nothing remotely collectable. Well, that’s not true. I treated myself to a Gold CD for $50. I’ve said before, you can’t really go wrong with those. They keep their value.

I finished the day at an old favorite Thai restaurant, which was amazing as usual. Just like the good old days when you would judge how good the food was by how long your tongue would burn after the meal. And it was a while.

The traffic feature on the GPS did its job and told me when construction was coming up and when I would be delayed by traffic and for how long. At one point it was counting down when the traffic jam would end and almost as soon as it said it was over, we started speeding up again. Amazing.

So tomorrow is car stereo repair time. And tonight has been cleaning, logging, and ripping. I’ll do some relative waves posts with some of the new editions I picked up tonight as well.

Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Succeed

Posted by anachostic on April 5, 2018 No comments

I was browsing my old posts and found a semi-promise to relate a story about a massive keyboard I didn’t want anymore. And the thought of that coincided with something I’ve given thought to in the past with collections.

But first, the story. At one point in my studio, I had five keyboards. Two 88-key and three 61 key synths. On one rack, behind my desk, I had the General Music Equinox and the Casio CZ-1.

On the wall to the right of my desk, I had the Roland RD-600 and a CME UF6. The CME did not have any sounds; it was just a performance controller. Sadly, the computer drivers went out of date before I could ever use it. I’ve actually forgotten where it went or what I did with it.

And in storage was an old Ensoniq ESQ-1, my first professional-grade keyboard. It was awesome to the end. That keyboard was eventually sold for a pittance to a guy I was in a club with. I should have just kept it in storage.

Anyway, I didn’t have a real use for all these keyboards, especially two 88-key controllers. The Equinox had to go. I wasn’t looking to make money on it, I thought it would be a fair trade for a mixer, which is something I did have a need for at the time.

I have a Guitar Center in my town, so I loaded up the Equinox in the GF’s car and we headed down to make a deal. This keyboard is a beast, all metal case, weighted keys, hard drive, floppy drive, sequencer, the works. But when I get to the equipment guy at Guitar Center, he looks it over and just says, “nah.” Not literally, but he said as politely as possible that they did not want it. I explained that I didn’t want cash for it, I wanted to do a trade. That didn’t change his mind. So I was bummed out and got ready to pick the monster back up to haul it outside again. But then the sales guy asked, “What were you looking to get for it, anyway?”

And I can’t definitely explain why that question caused me to see red. Maybe I thought he was mocking me after telling me my keyboard was worth nothing to them. It was a pointless question, completely unnecessary. Like if I said, 50 bucks, he would change his mind? Did he want to see just how desperate I was? Was he looking to either take advantage of a low price or laugh at me for an unrealistic price? All these thoughts rushed through my mind and I just snapped at him. “Nothing, if you’re not interested in taking it!” And things got awkward, partially because my outburst didn’t really make any sense.

I stormed out of Guitar Center carrying my massive anchor under my arm and the GF followed me out, silently and probably sheepishly. I’m not one for making a scene (unless someone forgets my SPOON), so it was just bad all around. And you know what kind of hurt the most? I bought that keyboard used from the Guitar Center in Plymouth Meeting before I came to Florida. They’ll sell it, but they won’t trade for it.

So fuck Guitar Center. After calming down and reassessing, I decided to try the other option, Sam Ash Music. This would require a longish drive, like an hour away. So I loaded the Equinox up and headed out solo. This sales guy tried to set my expectations low. He said that nobody really wanted these old synthesizers anymore and the best he could do is try to sell it as a MIDI controller. Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. He said he could give me $150 for it.

As insulting as that was, I pressed on. I asked if I could do a trade for a mixer and he warmly agreed. We walked over to the mixers and I reviewed what I could get for $150. There was an ok model, but a much better one was there for $200. So I asked him if I could get the $200 mixer. He said yeah, we could do that. We had a deal. (Spoiler: we didn’t.)

The sales guy gets the mixer, does up all the paperwork for the keyboard trade and he sends me off to the cashier. She punches everything in and says that’ll be $54. Excuse me? This was a trade. She says yeah, the keyboard is a $150 credit and your mixer is $200. The sales guy gets called back over. I ask him what’s going on and he reiterates that we agreed the keyboard would be $150. I explain that I thought when we were looking at mixers and I asked if I could get the $200 mixer, we were negotiating. Nope, we were not negotiating at all.

I didn’t want to storm out of a second store in a blind fury, so I sucked it up and bought my $200 mixer for $50 and unloaded an anchor. In hindsight, I should have kept the keyboard in storage. I could have gifted it to someone who really wanted to play music.

So that’s the story of the Equinox. I said that that the circumstances of that story made me think of collections. The other night I did a quick Craigslist search for CDs and found someone selling his collection of “over 750” CDs. First of all, you don’t have an accurate count, that’s strike one. You don’t have a list of albums or even artists, strike two. You can’t make out any titles from the photos you posted, strike three. And for your strikeout, what were you looking to get for it, anyway? $2,250? hmmmm. Ok. $3/CD is fair, if I want ALL the CDs. But at this point, from what I know about the collection, I want zero.

This is the curse of all collections, that the bigger they get, the less aggregate value they have and the more individual value they potentially have. It’s the same problem with thrift shops and many flea market dealers. They make the incorrect assumption that every CD is worth the same. Any intelligent person would agree that is not true at all. And as the valuable CDs are snatched up, you are left with nothing but junk that is worth far less than the price you are asking.

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