I’ve spent the week helping my mom prepare all her stuff for this huge garage sale happening tomorrow. My Dad had a pretty decent record collection that spanned from the 60′s to the mid to late 80′s after which he switched over to CD’s. We don’t have a record player anymore so we decided to sell them and keep his massive CD collection.

The lady who’s overseeing the sale put them up at $5 each (that’s less than $1 in US money) and I was really bristling at the price. I know records are having a resurgence and I knew we could get more than $5 a piece… it felt like an insult to him to be honest. 

One of her early clients came over and offered us $300 (about US $50 bucks) for the whole collection and my mom refused. We just decided we were keeping them. It wasn’t taking up any space, we might as well have given them away for that price.

But I know a guy who owns a thrift shop and he sells records and I asked him to come and look at the collection. He was pretty blown away. He had a copy of Bob Marley Legend in his hand and told me he could easily sell it for TT$100 (about US$15) in his store. Eventually we agreed that he’d take the whole collection on consignment and take a 40% cut. It’s not something he generally does, but as he put it, “we’re cool,” so I spent the day doing inventory of all the records (about 250 in all). He’s having an event in his store tomorrow night specifically targeting his clients who buy records and he told me that many will definitely sell. I don’t care about when they sell to be honest. They’ve been sitting in storage for 20 years gathering dust. I just want them to go to people who will appreciate them. I’m really happy with this arrangement and I’m pretty sure my Dad would be too.