Digging Story (In 3 Parts)

RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
edited October 2010 in Strut Central
Part I

I work with a sales force of 900 people and some of them know I look for records and they let me know if they ever come across any in their day to day sales calls. A month or so ago one of them called me and said he knew where there were more than 50,000 records in a basement out in nowheresville Texas. He made a call and hooked it up so I could look at them. I called the woman who had the records and she told me the following story.............

A jazz musician in Florida had passed away and donated his record collection to a Bird Sanctuary in his hometown. The bird sanctuary did not have the time or space to deal with them so they contacted a charity in the Texas panhandle and asked them if they wanted the LP's. This charity is involved with the arts and decided to take the LP's and make a "museum" inside some historic buildings that they were refurbishing. The recoords have been sitting in a basement for 3 years and she said we could come look at them under one condition. We could only buy LP's that there were duplicates of and she stated that about 30% of them were duplicates.

So...knowing those rules....would you drive 3 hours to look at the collection?
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  Comments


  • yes. but i would probably go by train so i could sleep/get drunk

  • haze25haze25 759 Posts
    If you have the time, fuck it, thats still alot of records you can possibly buy, though you might see some stuff that is off limits you might really want, and that always sucks. I say go, i would.

  • ReynaldoReynaldo 6,054 Posts
    Sounds too good to be true.

  • Yes. OK. Part II.

  • haze25 said:
    though you might see some stuff that is off limits you might really want, and that always sucks.

    If there's anything I've learned about Rock, and I'm not trying to hop on the guy's lap here, is that he has finessing not for sale records from people down to a science.

    [strike]Now given the situation, first thing I thought of was how people overestimate how many records there are, lady says 50K, cut that in half at the most. More often than not you're told they have thousands to maybe find a thousand or less. So lets say at best there is 25K in records, 30% of 25K is 7.5K. I was thinking about your last road trip and the ratio of chud to gold you dug up, and the diminishing returns in 2010. Granted you weren't looking at collections, but random stores, etc, but still you don't amass that large of a collection with focus. Tough call, obviously ask if anyone else has been allowed to go through it. I say go on a weekend where you have absolutely nothing to do, 6 hours worth of gas money isn't all that much, and you know if you don't go you'll be wondering what's in there for a while.[/strike]

    Wait was I just trying to give Rock advice on looking at a collection, sheeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiittttttt. So what happened?

  • shooteralishooterali 1,591 Posts
    PARTII

  • ReynaldoReynaldo 6,054 Posts
    It was all dixieland.

  • selperfugeselperfuge 1,165 Posts
    i agree with GV's points.. the weird thing is today i was contemplating starting a "what's the farthest you've ever driven for a crap "collection"?" type thread. maybe later in the week.

    sounds like those records aren't going anywhere, her name is not out there. sounds real promising but the biggest red light is the fact these are not record people, have no inventory, and yet are experts at which ones are dupes.

  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    Rockadelic said:
    So...knowing those rules....would you drive 3 hours to look at the collection?

    Yes, averaging 100 mph or so.

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    shooterali said:
    PARTII

    So this morning at 6:00 my buddy and I took off to see the collection. The woman who I had spoken to met us and was a sweetheart. She explained that the Three Rivers Foundation promoted arts and science for young people. They had an Observatory for Astronomy fans and also promoted various types of music. She saw the record collection as a way to get young people interested in all kinds of music. She took us on a tour of their Ballroom, showed us the stuffed polar bear and the actual bar that was on the show Gunsmoke. And then she took us to the basement.




  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
    Jesus...

  • how many flower drum songs did you find?

  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    IS THAT FIDDLER ON THE ROOF?

    b/w

    Damn, clean and organized...

  • so complete and utter chud or were there some scores?

  • I'm sure there were at least a few good records but damm, this suspense is killing me!

  • Zephyrhills, FL is a suburb of Tampa Bay, 5 hours from Miami. I say this story ends well, but what do I know, I'm just a tourist in this record game.

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    Good Google skills GV....the musician's name was Billy Gardner......they had his customized drum head hanging on the wall.

  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    Rockadelic said:
    Good Google skills GV....the musician's name was Billy Gardner......they had his customized drum head hanging on the wall.

    Very interesting...

    WHAT ABOUT THE RECORDS? ;-)

  • More googling tells me he was rocking the hammond B3. And he might have been down with Seagrams, Canadian Mist, and Busch beer. Unless he got those at the local liquor store, BG partied. The plot thickens...

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    Part III

    We started digging at 10:20....we had seen everything by 1:00....it was a "collection" more than an accumulation which is usually good news....Bobby Hackett, Herbie Mann and and Billy May for days.....who the HELL let Billy Vaughn record 279 LP's?? Doris Day....check.....Kay Kyser.....yep.....Stanley Black.....for days......Edmundo Ros.....si.

    I pulled 3 Lp's.....THREE!!! Some weird japanese electronic LP......OG Andrew Hill on Blue Note w/Dolphy & Dorham....Karen Dalton in the shrink.on Capitol ................... L**e had 4 good Latin LP's...that's it....nothing more....nada.

    But without dupes we couldn't even get those.

    We thanked her and left empty handed.

    Found a real cool Ike & Tina Turner LP I'd never seen before on the way home.....and a weird local cover band doing ZZ Top & Bad Company..


    Nothing ventured nothing gained.

  • ReynaldoReynaldo 6,054 Posts
    Haha. Knew it!

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    Reynaldo said:
    Haha. Knew it!

    Yeah....you nailed it.....Plenty of "Dicks Of Dookieland" too

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
    Rockadelic said:
    Part III

    We started digging at 10:20....we had seen everything by 1:00....it was a "collection" more than an accumulation which is usually good news....Bobby Hackett, Herbie Mann and and Billy May for days.....who the HELL let Billy Vaughn record 279 LP's?? Doris Day....check.....Kay Kyser.....yep.....Stanley Black.....for days......Edmundo Ros.....si.

    I pulled 3 Lp's.....THREE!!! Some weird japanese electronic LP......OG Andrew Hill on Blue Note w/Dolphy & Dorham....Karen Dalton in the shrink.on Capitol ................... L**e had 4 good Latin LP's...that's it....nothing more....nada.

    But without dupes we couldn't even get those.

    We thanked her and left empty handed.

    Found a real cool Ike & Tina Turner LP I'd never seen before on the way home.....and a weird local cover band doing ZZ Top & Bad Company..


    Nothing ventured nothing gained.

    For every "doubles of East Of Underground" trip, there's bound to be one of those. Probably a lot more than just one.

  • Ouch! And here I was hoping Billy was down and had multiple James Knight, Little Beaver, and Gwen McCrae records. Nope...just more bs in twentyten.

  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    Rockadelic said:
    Nothing ventured nothing gained.

    You had to do it.

    I've had similar experiences dozens of times.

    No remorse...

  • selperfugeselperfuge 1,165 Posts
    sucks Rock, but sounds like you had a pretty good time nonetheless.

  • parallaxparallax no-style-having mf'er 1,266 Posts
    Hey Rock,

    There was no way that you could pass up the opportunity. I was hoping for a better outcome, especially after seeing the pictures from Part II.

    Better luck next time.

    Kindly,
    parallax

  • nzshadownzshadow 5,518 Posts
    Ouch.

    but that feeling you had when you first laid eyes on all them thar rekkids... you cant beat it.

    ...well i guess the feeling you had when you pulled EOU doubles beat it but you know what i mean.

    all part of the game.

  • dammsdamms 704 Posts
    DocMcCoy said:
    Jesus...
    ...Mary...

  • Rockadelic said:
    Plenty of "Dicks Of Dookieland" too

    On the other hand, you could have been in your drawers watching Kirk Herbstreit and Lou Holtz pontificating on the Red River game. YOUR CHOICE.
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