Cassette heaven

I decided to have a poke around in some local charity shops today. There were a few CDs here and there and I even found a pile of old 7" singles in one shop -but there was nothing really worth buying. As my mind began to wander to which cake I would chose from the bakers up the road, I stumbled across a massive box of treasure.

My attention was drawn to the box because of the sheer size of it and the vast number of cassettes it contained. All of the blank tapes seemed to be in near perfect condition with no writing on any of the inlay cards and nice shiny boxes. 

I spent a few minutes looking through the box and was a little disappointed to find all the cassettes were only ferric tape and either 60 or 90 minute length. No TDK MA100 to be found. 

Despite their relatively humble specification I found it hard to resist these tapes and I selected ten of the best looking examples. I expected to have to pay somewhere between five and ten pounds for my haul, but considering the price they sell for on eBay, this still seemed like a good buy. 

Having laid my prize down on the counter I locked eyes with the cashier and cautiously said, "How much for these?" 

He looked me up and down before making his opening gambit, "50p mate." 

"50p each?" I ventured, "That's a bargain!" 

"No, 50p for all of them," he replied. "Or you can take the whole box for £5."

"Errr, I don't have room for them ALL," I spluttered

"But you want them don't you?" 

At this point I thought he was teasing me, but I soon realised he was actually pleading with me, "Please take them, I have a lady that brings them in every week. She says they used to belong to her mother and I'm never going to get rid of them." 

I stuck to my guns and resisted the temptation to buy hundreds of blank cassettes - even if they were in perfect condition. When I got home I declared myself very happy with my haul and decided to see if there was anything recorded on the tapes. I rewound the first in the pile and pressed play. After a few seconds the muffled sound of a church service came out of the speakers. 

As it turned out, every one of the cassettes featured a Christian service and I guess this was the way an elderly lady kept in touch with her church. I imagine the original owner would listen to the most recent service and then simply put the cassette away and forget about it. If the tapes had only been played once, this explains why they are in such good condition.

I soon went into nerd overdrive and found a fantastic website that allowed me to date the cassettes by the design of their shells. Most of my selcetion were TDK AD or TDK AR and they seem to date between 1987 and 1995. I find it amazing that nearly forty year old cassettes can be in such good condition. 

I'll be honest, I have toyed with the idea of going back to the shop and buying the box in order to sell them on eBay, but I realise it's too little reward for the effort. Still, I'm enjoying the wave of nostalgia this whole episode has brought on and I'm already creating various mix tapes in my head. Home taping isn't killing music in this house, it's providing tender loving care.

Dead people's records

I occasionally like to take a look in charity shops to see if they have anything interesting and maybe find a bargain. As a music fan I tend to gravitate towards the media section of the shop along with the usual assortment of middle aged men who mutter to themselves and have poor hygiene. The people in the media section also tend to be territorial and are not adverse to getting their elbows out in order to fend off any rivals for a bargain.

If you can get to it, most shops will have a small selection of vinyl records, but they always seem to be the usual assortment of Herb Alpert, James Last, Dean Martin or Andy Williams LPs from the sixties and seventies. There are often multiple copies of the same record available. I once took great pleasure in lining up five copies of "The Sound of Bread" to ensure that any passing Bread enthusiasts wouldn't have to look too hard to find the copy in best condition. Occasionally you will see a dusty box of classical music sitting underneath the shelves. Such boxes are often groaning with ten disc box sets or various "Classics for Pleasure" titles that haven't been played in sixty years. I have even seen boxes of cassettes - but searching those is a bit too hardcore even for me.

The one thing that all of these records and tapes have in common is that they are worthless. The audience for easy listening music is quite literally dead. Even the few living people who are interested in the genre aren't likely to need a another copy of "Al Martino: Gold" or Perry Como "And I love you so".

I also see other patterns emerging with newer music. Almost every single charity shop in the UK seems to contain the Robbie Williams back catalogue on CD. Invariably you can walk out of any 'chazza' in England with at least four copies of "Escapology" if you so desire. However, I suspect these CDs are merely the discarded ephemera of Generation X as they move wholesale to streaming services rather than as a result of their untimely deaths.

Therefore anything worth owning in a charity shop tends to stick out like a turd in a swimming pool. I have seen the prices of anything even vaguely worth owning rocket in the last couple of years. It seems the people who kindly volunteer to work in charity shops have become attuned to the difference between a box of dead people's records and something people might actually want. So unless you need another LP by The Tijuana Brass or to overpay for something you do want, you might as well avoid charity shops.