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CDs... an embarrassment of riches!

I also have two large crates of CDs. I have ripped them all and like having a backup to my digital files on the NAS.

I keep them stored in a cool, dry, place in good solid crates with handles so they can be easily moved if needed.
 
I have close to a thousand cds, all purchased at thrifts. Most are jazz. It's much easier to find jazz in cd form than any other here. I rarely see jazz records and most are what I call jazz lite, your Peter Nero, Pete Fountain, Boots Randolph kind of music. But I am reaching critical mass meaning I am running out of space. I really should start ripping them.
 
Nice to hear that I'm far from the only hoarder of these things!

RT Fan said:
Recently while out for a walk I found a rack of cds sitting out by the curb in front of a house. Roughly 100 or so, most of which that interested me I had already but I grabbed 5 including Cream: Disraeli Gears & Traffic Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. That told me all I need to know about the value of used cds, basically worthless. So my collection which I probably spent around $25,000 buying is now worth $2500-$3,000. Nice trade.
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Funny, because just yesterday I also grabbed a copy of that Low Spark of High Heeled Boys on CD... from a free pile (which seems to be a kind of tradition in my town) in front of someone's house. Can't say that I'm a big fan of that band, but I do like the title track of that album and the other spacier, jazzier Winwood led stuff...

Engel said:
Don't get me started! Walked out of an op shop (Goodwill) the other day with around 30 really excellent condition CDs for $90. We're talking Original Jazz Classics, ECM, Blue Note, etc. Lots of high quality stuff. Felt like a kid in a candy shop because these were CDs that not so many years ago were selling at $25-30 a pop here in Australia. A lot of them looked mint, like they had been dumped by a store or distributor.

Yeah, yeah, I know, we can stream most of this music now. But I like CDs. Have to be careful now as I'm running out of WAF storage area for these in the listening parlour, but I'm finding lots of great stuff.
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I listen to all kinds of music, but I'm a big jazz fan and will pick up pretty much anything on Original Jazz Classics, ECM, Blue Note if the price is good enough... Nice score!

eiraved said:
I love CDs, and I had a huge vintage jazz CD scroe some weeks ago at a garage sale. Bought over 600 CDs for $80. Virtually all looked like new.

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/cd-scroe.979324/
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Impressive score there (or "scroe" to be more in line with this forum). Your photo wasn't big enough for me to see titles, but just from the graphics on the spines I could tell that there were a lot of Impulse, Prestige and a few other great jazz labels. My only issue with getting that many of those things all at once would be were to put them and I don't like having my music stored in any way that isn't easily accessible. I figure that physical media is already seeming inconvenient enough without the hassle of having to dig it out from deep storage... Maybe, the best storage solution that I've seen is from a guy I know who bought a few old library card catalog cabinets. These things are really handsome, old, super-sturdy metal things, covered in thick enamel paint... and they apparently are just the right size to hold CDs. The front of the thing has little compartments for cards that one could make up to say what's in each drawer... I need something like that!
 
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RunOutGroove said:
Ok... so I'm someone who still collects CDs, knowing full well that I could ditch them and have the same quality versions of the music on a hard drive or in cyberspace somewhere with more in the way of convenience and without the storage space hassle. I do prefer LPs, for various reasons (little to do with sound quality though) but to me CDs are still a great physical format and I like to hold the music in my hands... probably no small part due to the fact that I dig the graphics (I'm a graphic designer) and when they have 'em, the liner notes.

Anyway, it's surely become pretty obvious to everyone on here that the CD format is really out of fashion at the current moment. That being the case, folks like me that still like this format can find them on the cheap and in my case anyway... for free. I've been buying a few cheap ones where I find them and have been getting lots of others for free from folks who apparently think of them as so worthless they're just ditching masses of those things... I write this because I found another sizable batch of them just today and I'm realizing just how many of these things I've acquired in the last year alone. I've been collecting CDs since the early 90s and I have a fairly large collection but I'd bet that close to 10% of what I have might be just from this last year. Not that I'm complaining but I have a number of 'em that I've had for a while but still haven't gotten around to listening to. I pick up just about any title, if it's cheap enough or free, that looks like it might have any chance of being interesting to me... which ends up being a lot and is starting to become a chore to make room for. At some point, I think that I'll need up making some sacrifices and getting rid of a stack that are in my "C-list" category, but for now, they're really piling up...

I wonder if other folks who still use this very unfashionable format are also taking advantage of this "dumping phenomenon" and hording these things?
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I still buy cds, and have no plans on stopping any time soon.
They get immediately ripped into my collective and then shelved (well, milk crated, but whatever) but I still believe having the physical media is superior to relying on streaming.

ymmv.
 
jazzmans said:
They get immediately ripped into my collective and then shelved (well, milk crated, but whatever) but I still believe having the physical media is superior to relying on streaming.
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What I rely upon is having multiple backup sets to the already mirrored NAS.

My physical media is on indefinite loan to the local library. :)
 
E-Stat said:
What I rely upon is having multiple backup sets to the already mirrored NAS.

My physical media is on indefinite loan to the local library. :)
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oh don't get me started on backups, mirroring, raid 5, 6, 1+0 and the like.....


seriously, don't get me started

in the digital domain, if you don't have 3 copies of the data, you don't have the data period.


The quantity (by space) of my music collection is dwarfed by the size of my movie collection. Every cd I have ever owned, ripped to wavs is just under 4 tb, whereas my movie collection is currently around 40TB....
 
I like, many others, enjoy having the physical medium to hold and look at while listening; did/do that as well with record/LP covers. CDs have become my personal choice for music playback. I do have access to streaming but I prefer CD. I find most of mine at the American Cancer Society's Discovery Shops. Much like Goodwill etc but their items for sale appear to be of much better quality. The CDs I've purchased there have looked and played as if new. Prices range from $0.50 to $2.00 depending on the genre and artist. I will pay the going rate for a new CD if it's for an artist that I really want to have in my collection although my tastes are kind of out of the norm so some titles are still hard to find. OPG.
 
I bought six packs of these to store CD's in. The new and used ones I buy all get ripped to FLAC and stored on two different hard drives. I'm about to buy a third drive to put in a fire proof safe.

https://www.amazon.com/Evelots-Storage-Bag-Zippered-Clear-Handles-Hold-Total-Black-Top-Set/dp/B07KWCD1G5/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3S9MKNYKYML14&keywords=cd+storage&qid=1642449604&sprefix=Cd+st,aps,1129&sr=8-3

Each bag holds between 50 or 55 cd's in jewel cases. They are nicely stacked on metal shelving in my dry basement. Box sets or oversized CD packages get stored elsewhere. I put them in alphabetical order, and slip a paper note in the front with the first and last CD name. I can find any cd I own in a few minutes.

Of course, I then bought about 1500 cds really cheap and now have to rearrange the entire collection to store the ones I want to keep. One set of 1250 or so cost less than $200. Lots of those were junk, of course. (Junk to me anyway.) A set of about 100 I bought from my brother was all good stuff that I didn't have, so I was happy to pay him $200. I'm off the purchasing band wagon for a while. Have to sell off the duplicates and assorted stuff I don't want to keep.
 
I'll add here (as if anyone really cares!) that one thing that I don't collect is DVDs. I'm a real film buff, but even before the advent of streaming, I always felt that I'd rather just rent a title at the local movie rental place (the biggest in town - a truly great place and only block from where I live). I certainly don't care about the whole physical media for that and as someone who mostly prefers to watch new (to me) moves rather than the same old ones over and over again, it never made sense to me to hoard the physical media. I do have a small collection of those things but probably 95% of it was gifted by friends - friends who surely thought, "that guy's got a ton of junk, I bet he'd love some DVDs!" Anyway, it's not like I'm any kind of minimalist because I have enough CDs, LPs and books to make up for the fact that I don't have so many DVDs...
 
toddalin said:
Some have been discontinued and are not so cheap. I'd like to get this one but really don't want to pay $30-$85 for a used CD when I have the LP and most tracks on the compilation. Ever priced Wish You Were Here in Surround?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/224788840969?hash=item3456758209:g:1IAAAOSwPZlh1yN9
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Funny, someone was just telling me about this band and how great some of their stuff was once you get beyond the hit single or two that they had. Weird to think of "rare CDs" in this climate where so many are dumping these things. It makes me think of this record label called Blood and Fire that I own a lot of recordings on who went out of business some years. It was a reggae reissue label and reissued a lot of really cool classic stuff, much of it on the rare/obscure side where the LPs would be all but impossible to track down. I pretty much never see anything on that label for sale anywhere... so I'd bet that those CDs fetch collector type prices. There was really a kind of cult around that label when it was happening, in the 90s...
 
RunOutGroove said:
Funny, because just yesterday I also grabbed a copy of that Low Spark of High Heeled Boys on CD
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Took me a while to get into this album but when I did I couldn't stop listening to it. Well worth persevering with IMO. Even found myself a vinyl copy to go with the CD!
 
I still buy cds new when an artist strikes my fancy, or when I want to round out a particular artist. I am about to buy 5-6 Bonnie Raitt cds..

If I happen to be in a thrift or second hand store that has cheap cds, I'll usually walk out with as many as I can if I like the artist(s), albums, and if they are on good condition. I recently gut a dozen or so for a buck a piece. I think I am over 800 now.
 
RT Fan said:
Recently while out for a walk I found a rack of cds sitting out by the curb in front of a house. Roughly 100 or so, most of which that interested me I had already but I grabbed 5 including Cream: Disraeli Gears & Traffic Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. That told me all I need to know about the value of used cds, basically worthless. So my collection which I probably spent around $25,000 buying is now worth $2500-$3,000. Nice trade.
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If you listen to them, it's priceless because of the music. If you try to sell, then not worth that much.
 
I finished up the bulk of my CD collecting several years ago, divided almost equally between jazz and classical. I figure I have about 2000 titles (never bothered with an actual count). Before covid I found new-for-me used stuff at garage sales and Half Price Books special sales (tent sales, state fairground sales), for the most part. I rarely paid more than a buck or two a disk or set. Half Price regular prices are way overdone. I check out local Goodwills if I'm in their hoods, but it's always garbage. Once in a while I'll pay retail; though that's exceedingly rare. The only items I've bought full freight in the last three years are by Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson; no other way to get them. In my main system, I play them on a Technics changer (with a Sony changer for backup). In the other system, I play on a Panasonic blu-ray. I know it's gonna be a pain in the ass for some niece or nephew when I check out, but I do love having my CDs in the physical world close at hand.
 
My deal is I love old blues but the records are prohibitively expensive to collect. Recently I wanted to buy Albert King's first record from 1961 "Freddie King Sings". Original copies or 70's reissues are $50 bucks or more. I bid on one and it sold for $67, I bailed at $25.
There's a 2-CD set that has his first 3 albums, plus Albert King's first album, for under $13 delivered. Couldn't say no.
There's a lot of blues being reissued on CD, mostly imports, that are dirt cheap. Like pennies on the dollar compared to the vinyl, if you could find it. And that's brand new.
 
I started buying CD's in the Thrifts ( Goodwill & the late lamented Salvation Army ) about 2014. Started with only about 50 having missed out due to lack of money for years, now I have approx 1600. All ripped and stored in quadruplicate because disks are relatively cheap. The physical copies are alphabetized and stored in heavy duty boxes from Michael's ( No longer available, I have 7 extra for about 700 more CD's ) and stacked two to a cube in cube storage shelves.

Mark Gosdin
 
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