What Did You Do With Your Old Albums?

Parent Cafe
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<p>We have dozens of old albums in a cabinet in our living room. They are H’s collection from college and he refuses to part with them. He bought an old turntable/stereo from Goodwill a few years ago and plays them once in a blue moon. I guess we’ll be moving them to the retirement home someday…sigh</p>

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<p>Do ya think the Partridge Family ones are worth anything? :)</p>

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<p>^^^Those are probably right up there on the price list with my Monkees albums.</p>

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<p>[so THAT’s where they went!](<a href=“http://cgi.ebay.com/THE-MONKEES-ALBULM-33-RPM-VINYL-RECORD-12_W0QQitemZ150110769198QQihZ005QQcategoryZ306QQcmdZViewItem”>http://cgi.ebay.com/THE-MONKEES-ALBULM-33-RPM-VINYL-RECORD-12_W0QQitemZ150110769198QQihZ005QQcategoryZ306QQcmdZViewItem&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

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<p>Sadly, I left all my old LPs at my last home when I moved in 2002. Kept them for years in hopes that technology would catch-up and permit flawless transfer from vinyl to CD or to DVD. Well, I finally realized they were just collecting dust, I had no functioning turn-table, and that I could finally get most of them in CD version.</p>

<p>Still, I am sad about losing my Gil Scott-Heron, Stevie Wonder, Ricky Lee Jones, Cannonball Aderly, Genesis, The Sinatra-Antonio Carlos collaboration, Ella Fitzgerald and Police LPs, since some of their works were not re-issued intact or not re-issued at all in CD form. Some of the re-worked CD compilations are just dreadful. Simple marketing and that’s all. You can buy 5 different CD-versions of basically the same collection of songs and not get the original album.</p>

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<p>NPR has a story about an increase in vinyl sales. <a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9598796[/url]”>Putting a New Spin on Vinyl Records : NPR;

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<p>H got a new turntable for Christmas and has begun digitalizing albums (as well as playng them.) We have boxes and boxes of them, in the attic, closets, corners of the living room, etc. We seem to have acquired everyone else’s in the family, too.</p>

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<p>We sold all our albums in the early 90s. H was an early adopter of CDs. </p>

<p>However, if you have the patience–or if your college-bound kid has the patience–sorting out those that are worth something could yield you quite a bit of money. Rare albums sell for upwards of $100 on Ebay or special music sites.</p>

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<p>dmd, do you happen to know if there is a website or a book that lists values of albums?</p>

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<p>Garland, is this what your husband is using? <a href=“PageNotFound”>PageNotFound; </p>

<p>We sold the bulk of our albums at a couple of yard sales. I can see decorating a basement wall with them. A whole wall of album covers!</p>

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<p>Urban Oufitters has frames for the covers.</p>

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<p>Some of us actually collect records. Mine is a very large collection (larger than all the cartons in your basements put together) of international ethnic and folk music (starting from way before they coined the term “world music”) in all speeds including many 78s. If anyone wants to donate to this type of collection, pm me.</p>

<p>But my albums of American popular music, like those of most people, are worth little or nothing, especially on eBay (yes, not even a dollar) because most people who want them already have them. Best thing to do IMHO is donate them to a thrift store and take a tax deducation.</p>

<p>Sax: you can get a workable 78 turntable if you buy most any refurbished Dual from the 60s or 70s.</p>

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<p>My d has all the punk and new wave stuff in her room as ‘decor’ as well. She’s not very interested in the ‘long-hair’ seventies records though. </p>

<p>After seeing Garland’s post, I may just buy my husband a turntable for his birthday! (I was stumped for a present idea.) </p>

<p>Then again, I did notice all our old Little Feat albums are selling on Ebay for $25 a piece…lol! Wonder what the JT stuff, the complete Billy Joel collection and all that '70s era Bob James would go for?</p>

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<p>Goldmine is interesting for the oldies:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.goldminemag.com/Default.aspx[/url]”>http://www.goldminemag.com/Default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>ldmom: it usually depends heavily on the condition of both the records and the album covers.</p>

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<p>Ok, here’s what we’ve done. Restoration Hardware (and someone mentioned Urban Outfitters) sells frames for albums. I bet you can buy them online too. We slid some of our old albums into a frame and arranged them on the wall in our finished basement. They’re pretty cool!</p>

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<p>dadofasam. Where would I begin to look? I have one turntable I really liked but the belt is too worn. Thanks for sharing :)</p>

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<p>We donated all our albums to our Girl Scout troop to raise money…and it made some people very happy</p>

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<p>Sax: see if there is a store near you that repairs and sells older stereo equipment. Short of that, a dependable thrift store, garage sale or bulletin board.</p>

<p>There are new 78 turntables available; see the Goldmine website for instance.</p>

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<p>I love my dad’s record collection; he still has all his rock albums (Zep, Mott the Hoople, Deep Purple, stuff like that), and his original turntable. I listen to his LPs quite a bit when I’m at home. If he’d let me take them to school, I probably would - something about listening to music on a record just makes it more of an experience and it sounds better than on an iPod.</p>

<p>By the way, if anyone is looking for needles, they still sell them at Circuit City (I guess they’re for mostly DJs these days). They might also have cheap turntables, but I’d check Craigslist and yard sales first.</p>