Skoretz - Uncollecting Records

History

I've been collecting records for quite a few years now. My collection started on a whim during my 3rd year of university, in 2019. I'd been vibing with this record from producer L'Orange and rapper Jeremiah Jae called The Night Took Us In Like Family. It's a cool record, set in the 50s mob era, lots of mafia talk. I saw that Mello Music Group released a record pressing on coloured vinyl that looked beautiful, and I ordered it. Well, now that I have a record coming in the mail, I guess I need a record player. It was backwards, but that's how it happened.

Since then, I've found the cool corners around local towns that sell records, places like Royal Cat in Guelph, Dr. Disk in Hamilton, or Play Da Record in Toronto. Time can really fly when you're flipping records and browsing for a find. I remember when I told myself that I'd only buy records that I would listen to, and my friend laughed at that. He said, "It starts that way, but you'll see." And I really did see, over time I've picked up albums with cool covers from the dollar bin, or bought things without hearing them first and they turn out to be terrible.

I did go through the typical "vinyl enthusiast" phase were I thought and espoused that listening to music on vinyl was superior to digital. But I don't really believe that anymore. Perhaps if you have the perfect system, you could lay claim to that. But there are so many links that can affect sound quality. From speakers, the speaker wire, the amplifier, and of course, the record player that you have. I don't think I have the perfect system, so I can't claim that when I play vinyl at home, it's better than some Spotify in your Bluetooth earbuds.

Exploration

Now, to make use of the records that I've purchased that aren't really that good, I thought that I could get into beatmaking. I mean, I'd heard of sampling, and I'd dabbled with Fruity Loops many years ago. But of course, that's a hard hobby. I am one of those people that gets obsessed with things and goes all in, but then my attention will shift and the hobby will fall to the wayside. Only if I return to it in a few cycles does that mean that the hobby will last.

Another thought was to DJ. Getting a second turntable and a mixer was a fun adventure, and I found that I took more to this variation of the hobby than beatmaking. I've made a couple of mixes from the tracks in my collection, and I have lots of fun with it. I haven't seriously tried scratching, or any of the more advanced techniques that fall under DJing, but It's fun to see how beats can go together. And it's much harder than it looks.

Both of these variations on the hobby were outlets for me to use the records that I don't really listen to for pleasure, to repurpose them in some way. And both were mildly successful at that. At this point, I have over 300 records, and I haven't yet given one up since I've started collecting, it has been growth only.

The Opportunity

A couple of years ago I travelled to Saskatchewan to see my family there and I got to talking records with my Uncle. He says he inherited a bunch of records, and would also rescue them from the trash when his friends or others in town were getting rid of them. Some, were quite valuable. I mean, he doesn't use the internet much, and as we talked about the records, Discogs, and the prices some of these records were worth, I offered to take some records home with me and try to sell them.

Once the records came home with me, they just joined the collection. I didn't try to become a Seller on Discogs, and I haven't had much luck with Marketplace selling in the past. And that brings me to last Christmas, wherein I decided that I can't keep these records forever, they aren't mine, and I haven't even really tried to sell any. So I thought that I'd buy the records off my uncle that I really like. The consequences of this is that, for the first time since I've started collecting records, I'm "retiring" some from the collection.

Uncollecting

This is an odd feeling for me. In recent years I've started to notice that I am a bit of a completionist, and a self-tracker. I like to collect things, and keep track of them. Therefore parting with something that was once part of my collection was a bit harder than I thought. But truly, these were records that just never hooked me.

And with this post, these entries are gone from my Discogs, as if they were never there save, for this account of my ownership.