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What would you do if you had to sell your music collection?


Hardbopjazz

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Just read a thread in one of the other sections and it made me wonder. What if I had to sell all my records/CD's? I guess being a minimalist is the way to live. There would be nothing to obsess or consume you. I don’t know if I could ever do that. I probably start collecting again shortly there after.

Could you live without your jazz?

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I couldn't live without music, but I could certainly live without my collection. There are a number of good radio stations nearby, and there's even a decent variety of music (including jazz) on our cable system. Then there's the library, streaming audio on the web... and my guitars, which don't get played enough. Hmm... ^_^

But really, the idea of selling my collection for a loss of... what... 50 or 60 cents on the dollar... no way. The Mosaics are probably the only things I wouldn't lose large chunks of money on. That and some of my better LP's... but I'm too sentimental to part with those either.

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Guest akanalog

i always think about it in the sense that-what if i pared my collection down to like 20 essential discs-what would make it? then i think what if something came out that i thought was incredible-then i would have to boot something to make room for this new discovery. it might be nice to do that-it would be like survivor CD collection style. and to just know everything i have is stuff that blows me away on every level. no ambivalence or anything.

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She's been advised to sell the whole thing at once, to not ignore Japan, and to play hardball.

Chuck was able to finance his AEC box by selling off most of his vinyl. I doubt that I have even a tenth of what he had, but I figure she should be able to get started on that new kitchen she's been wanting for far too long...

And yeah, I do sleep with one eye open. :g

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She's been advised to sell the whole thing at once, to not ignore Japan, and to play hardball.

Chuck was able to finance his AEC box by selling off most of his vinyl. I doubt that I have even a tenth of what he had, but I figure she should be able to get started on that new kitchen she's been wanting for far too long...

And yeah, I do sleep with one eye open. :g

I'm inspired by how noble and dedicated all this sounds. Kudos (esp. to JSngry and Chuck).

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Got it all backed up on a 300G drive (soon to get a 1TB drive). If I smell smoke, I grab that drive and I'm out the door. May not have the liner notes and artwork, but at least I've got the music. And yes, the 300G is backed on two smaller drives stored offsite so if I come home to smoldering trash heap of a house I've still got everything saved (back it up every two weeks).

Fire, tornados, and yard sales to fend off potential bankruptcy - I laugh in your general direction!

/famous last words. :(

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I have maybe 1/3 of my core collection backed up (the Mosaics and a few other box sets (including Jazz in Paris) and my favorite artists), but there is a long way to go. And I've filled up a 250 Gig hard drive! Partly I simply save at too high a sample rate, partly I have a lot of music. Could I live with just the music on the hard drive? Probably, though that is not exactly in the spirit of the question. This quickly leads us back to the morality issue of CDRs, dubs, etc.

What would I do if I had to sell off my collection and not keep back-up copies? A much, much harder question. The pieces I would be most interested in keeping until the bitter end are the Mosaics, and they're about the only thing with any resale value. I'd probably get rid of the rest of my vinyl first, then CDs I haven't listened to in the last two or three years. I think I'd probably do better selling off my book collection, which is mostly social science and urban studies books, and probably has a slightly higher resale value.

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Well, the truly noble thing to do would be to take that management position they keep offering me, make the $$$ now, and get her the kitchen right away. But that would be suicide of another type, and I'm too selfish to do that.

So don't get too inspired, ok? ;)

Management can be fun. No, management can be a SERIOUS lot of fun. Go for it, I say, Jim.

MG

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When I was growing up in the old country, from the time I was of 11 till 18 we had in our 400 sf apartment about 2,500 volumes of old books, about a quarter of the collection of my father's uncle that we inherited after he passed away. I, of course became a book-worm...

Some books were quite rare; to make our way into the States we sold the collection for $30,000. When we got to Brooklyn we had about 3 grand left, but that felt pretty good. Today the collection like this would be worth about 1,5 to 2 milllion.

So I guess selling my music collection would suck, but my friends here would hook me up with some burns of the essential stuff...plus I would become a regular on the BFT forum.

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I could finance grad school... or I could take out student loans!

Really, I would rather not do that, but sometimes when I see things going crazy on eBay that I know I don't listen to that much, it's tempting. But never the whole thing...

I suppose if I had to, I'd find other ways to hear great music. There are friends, there is the internet, there are the BFTs here (which I keep thinking I'll join in on someday), so it wouldn't be hard to remain inspired beyond looking at a rack of Blue Note and ESP spines.

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