Recommended Reading Week: Old Records Never Die ask whether it’s possible to reclaim your past and your records
Eric Spitznagel was perfectly content with his choice to sell his album collection. It was something he didn’t really need — everything’s digital nowadays and available with the click of a few buttons and dragging around crates of vinyl as an adult seemed unnecessary — nor did he really miss it much.
Until a conversation with Questlove for an old MTV website had him questioning everything. Questlove built his home around his 70,000-album collection. When Spitznagel, a writer for Men’s Health, Playboy, Equire and Rolling Stone among others, confessed to having sold off his collection in bits and pieces, the legendary Roots drummer grew silent.
The conversation rolled around in his head until one day Spitznagel wondered whether it might be possible to track down and repurchase his former collection. Not just rebuy new copies of the records he had, but find his actual copies and bring them home again.
“Old Records Never Die: One Man’s Quest for His Vinyl + His Past” is available at Amazon.ca.
In 1995, as a 13 year old teenager, I inherited my fathers 11,000+ record collection that moved with me to to mother’s house as my father moved out of province. Unbenounced to me, I came home from school one day to find that my mother put an ad in the paper and subsequently sold the collection off… the kind soul who took the most records, got the lowest price. Just a few years ago, I had the gumption to ask how much it was sold it for. Someone made out with a goldmine (I grew up studying the books… it was literally just that) for all of $500 bucks. I only six years ago started collecting with the 30-40 records I had left of my father’s collection. I have always fantasized about tracking my old records down by putting an ad in a paper… cool to hear that someone has actually pursued it themselves. Maybe it’s not over for me yet haha!
It’s not too late. Go find your records.
My biggest regret that haunts me to this day was selling my 3k record collection. I thought i was done hauling them around. And in that moment of weakness…. simply put i want them
back.