Poaching vinyl in thrift shops

A while back I shuffled the turntable back into the system along with a new cartridge- man what a difference the cartridge made. So now I find myself hunting our local thrift shops for vinyl. Really nothing new, but it has been a while since I last purchased loads of albums.

What a great bit of fun it is to slog thru five hundred or so albums looking for the jewels amongst the rubble. In the last few months I have developed a system that seems to work well.

Fan through the stacks and if a cover looks to be in decent shape, and it is a genre that holds even minimal interest look further. If there is no inner sleeve, move on. If there is a sleeve, pull the album. Any scratches at all and it gets shoveled back into the debris. No scratches? cool, then how good is the pressing? Look near the label to see if the vinyl is mirror smooth or looks orange peeled. The smoother the better.

What do the grooves look like? I have nixed albums for having too much compression in the grooves. Might as well have some dynamic range, eh?

Price? Around here it goes from 25c to $1 an album. I recently walked out with ten great finds for $10. Amazing good stuff. I'd never heard a group called 'The Nylons', a very cool a capela group out of Canada ca 1980 or so. Some Grace Jones. Some mint Columbia masterworks Wagner. Even an Alice Cooper picture disc. The lovely lass pictured was worth the price paid, even if it never gets played...

RW