The Mother Lode

For those of you who know me, you know that I love records. You know...vinyl. 33 1/3...45 rpm ... records. I am constantly searching for new stuff to add to my ever increasing collection.

Well, last week, I hit the mother lode.

While combing the hundreds-of-thousands of records on EBay, I came across the listing of a guy selling his "entire collection." Usually, this means 50 records or so, scuffed and tore all to hell. Curiousity got the better of me, so I clicked on. The pictures showed a pretty goodly amount of 45 rpm records, some sleeves, etc. I glanced at the description:

Selling my collection of 45 rpm records. Between 10 and 13,000 records.

Did I read that right? 13,000? Yikes!! The opening bid was $1,000...that's darn cheap for 13,000 records. So, I monitored the auction. Days went by.

On the last day, I opened my watch page, and the listing had changed.

100 45 rpm Record Lot

Damn. Too good to be true, I guess. After the bidding produced no buyers, I emailed the guy and asked if he still wanted to sell the lot of 13,000. To my surprise, he did. The catch...his price went up to $1,700.

I was game...Becky was not.

I had to negotiate now with two hostile people. Becky came up with a solution.

"You can buy the records, if I can get a motorcycle." Since Becky is all of 5 foot tall, I was sure she was kidding, so I went about my negotiating tactics with the Record Guy. The only way I would get these records, would be to get him to agree to a low ball offer.

I had to weigh my options carefully. Throw a real low-ball offer at him and potentially piss him off to the point of no return, or semi-low-ball him and potentially piss Becky off to the point of no return...

After carefully weighing the options for 2 seconds, I decided to low-ball him, and potentially kill the deal. $300. I know, it's laughable. I laughed. That's 2 cents per record. What a shame.

I sulked back home and told Becky I low-balled the guy, and the deal was probably dead.

"I guess I can't get that motorcycle then, huh?"

I laughed and said nope...but instead of laughing, she looked sad. Did she really want the bike?

"You weren't serious about the bike were you?"

"Well, yeah!!" Well crap. I just low-balled this guy and now you tell me you really meant it? Damn, I'm really bad at reading women!!

The next day the return e-mail came back. He said no to the $300...go figure. The worse news was he decided to not sell them after all. He didn't want to negotiate.

Deperate times called for desperate measures. I called him. For those of you not in the know, I HATE picking up the telephone to call someone else (getting calls are great, making them suck) but I felt it was my only option.

We talked for awhile, hashed out some terms, and finally decided on a price that was right for both of us. I am not at liberty to discuss the final terms with you, unfortunately, due to the legal implementations (actually, I just don't want to tell you!)

With money in hand, we borrowed Dad's van and travelled down South to Tennessee. Loaded the van down with 83 boxes of 45's, and returned home. After 30 minutes of un-loading boxes, the basement was filled. I had 5 very realistic goals for the lot of records:

1. At least one Chuck Berry 45 on Chess records (I ended up pulling about 7).
2. At least one full box of picture sleeves (I ended up with 9 boxes!!)
3. At least one Buddy Holly on Coral records (several re-issued Buddy Holly...none on Coral)
4. Beatles...Atco...Sweet Georgia Brown (NOPE)
5. I can't remember #5, but it must not have been very important...and I do know it didn't happen.

2 out of 5 may seem bad to you, but I got so much more that I didn't expect. So many mint condition records...not just new records, or junk records...but a lot of older stuff, and actual good stuff, even several boxes of mint promo records! It took 28 hours to look through the lot ONCE!! It was taken a full week of looking just to begin the organizational process, and I have a feeling I will be at this for a very, very long time!! Now, I have to find Becky a motorcycle...

PS...If you have a Sweet Georgia Brown on Atco by the Beatles, please let me know...I will buy it from you!!