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Digging landfills, dumpsters, skips, tips and bins

YemskyYemsky 710 Posts
edited September 2013 in Strut Central
In all those years in which I have accumulated records and CDs, I have used private sales, eBay, Discogs, local 2nd hand stores and on a few occasions charity / thrift stores to dispose of the surplus. Never have I thrown away a record or CD.

Obviously other people do.

I took some garden waste to the municipal dump today and noticed about a hundred DVDs in one of the skips, some of which I would have been interested in. I know that the council runs a strict policy of not allowing ANYTHING to be taken from the dump by folks, but seeing such a number of discarded media I asked the workers whether they ever have people dropping off larger amounts of CDs and records. They said "frequently", which only confirmed my concerns. But then they surprised me by saying that there used to be a company collecting records and CDs to "ship them to other countries [I am in the UK] - but nobody is interested in that anymore".
I am obviously ignorant of the vinyl and plastic raw material markets and whether they might have deteriorated as have the ones for paper and scrap metal at times...
???or have municipal dumps been a source for the professional 2nd hand record trade in the past?

  Comments

  • JustAliceJustAlice 1,308 Posts
    You need to get with Brix about this. He can break it all down for you....proverbially at least.
  • MexiMexi 6 Posts
    In my home town in Australia the local tips had big sheds at the front where they would sell crap that had been salvaged from the dump by their workers. There was always a decent stash of records there (it was good for bike parts too).
  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    My brother paid his way through college by picking promo CD's, LP's and Posters out of the dumpster at the WEA distribution center. One particularly good score was a tube of 100 withdrawn Prince posters which he sold to a dealer @ $20 a piece. We would pull between 200-500 CD's and Records a week....every week.
  • YemskyYemsky 710 Posts
    Rockadelic said:
    We would pull between 200-500 CD's and Records a week....every week.

    :bug:

    JustAlice, who is Brix?
  • GaryGary 3,982 Posts
    Jesus christ you guys can't be serious!
  • Campag_RecordCampag_Record 238 Posts
    In my part of the world (UK) one local dealer gets calls from the skip guys when vinyl has been dumped. He then pays them a few extra quid to get the records rather than just paying them pence so they continue to ring him. Also there are several sellers at the local markets who get the skip contents ie general household stuff inc. records. Had some decent stuff over the years from them.
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