Second Hand Shop Shark

I am from a music buying generation that started with vinyl, then cassette followed by CD. This transcended the peak of my album buying which was the 1980s. This decade commenced with the music cassette catching up with, then overtaking, sales of vinyl records. During my last couple of years at high school, vinyl had become unfashionable, through it's scratches and cumbersome nature. The small audio cassette was then the trendiest way to listen to your latest Iron Maiden, Def Leppard (or if you were so inclined Duran Duran) album. The CD didn't arrive until around 1985, and when it did hit the shelves of HMV, they were outrageously priced compared to tapes (cassettes). When Ozzy Osbournes' The Ultimate Sin album was released I could have bought the CD for around £8 (silly money on my meagre £60 a week warehouse workers salary) or the tape for around £2.99. My choice was already made for me.

I didn't start to buy CD's until the 1990s so my tape collection was huge by then. I still listened to them for many years into the 90s (occasionally having to repair them with sellotape etc) but by the millennium something had to be done about them. I boxed them all up and stored them away as any that I still valued musically I then bought on remastered CDs. 

Around 2003 I found myself between jobs so just prior to starting my next crap job in an ocean of career mediocrity, I decided to sell most of my old original cassette albums as I had become financially embarrassed. I separated them into boxes of condition as I only intended to sell the best condition albums. This was years before on line selling so I took them down to a second hand record shop in what is now Manchester's Northern Quarter. I had purchased second hand merchandise from this shop before and they always had notices up offering to buy unwanted second hand merchandise as well.

I drove into town in my Sierra Sapphire, parked up in the back streets of, what was then, a very seedy part of the city centre, and staggered to the shop weighed down with my box of tapes. The owner was behind the counter so I placed the box on the counter and asked him if he was interested in buying the tapes. He grunted something so I emptied the tapes on to the counter and he started to go through them. He didn't look too impressed as there was the occasional tut and sigh. After a couple of minutes he said "Aah I can see a pattern now to all these albums". "Oh you mean they're mostly 80s Rock and that kind of thing", I replied. "No I mean they're all shit", he said. "Oh", I said

He picked about 20 of them out in the end and offered me 50p for each one, which meant I was going to receive the princely sum of £10 for my troubles. This wasn't going to pay off the mortgage. I didn't want it to be a totally wasted journey so I accepted this and went on my way still with the majority of the tapes. Around a month later I revisited the shop to buy a second hand book and decided to have a quick look at the tapes. I immediately noticed 5 or 6 of mine for sale priced at £1.50 each.  I didn't bother buying the book I went for....