Cobb

So after going through this several dozen times, I've got a crate of CDs I'm willing to part with. I've ripped them at 128kb or 192 if I especially like the musicality. I then surf over to Secondspin.com to see what I can get. It turns out that by their price list I've got a pretty handsome collection. I easily tally up 116 bucks with just one third of the crate. So I pack them up and head over to their store in Santa Monica.

I approach the clerk with a big smile and tell him we're about to make each other's day. He snarks 'Maybe'. What is it about record store clerks that I can't stand? You know the type, undernourished, overpierced and with the look on his face which is saying, jeez I hope this asshole customer doesn't start screaming at me. He shakily assays my trove and scans them into his register warning me that the online prices only matter for the online store, his store's mileage may vary. Long story short, I got $38 lousy bucks and ended up taking more than half of my discs back home.

So I've got perfectly good CDs which have fattened my own personal stash of MP3s for which I can't get a nickel on the open market. Visual scratches which make no audible difference, missing liner notes, cracked cases. These are the retail excuses. Well, at least he didn't write me a check.

As an exercise in a home business, I assure you that it's not close to being profitable. I'm sure I spent a good 20 hours attending to the ripping of those disks. All that for 38 bucks minus one headache of a drive up and down the 405. The net value of the tracks ripped, off 15 disks that were accepted at an average of 8 per disc was about 31 cents each. Of the 33 I got prices for online that brings the price down to under 14.5. These are the real world economics of CD trading.

So my estimate of a quarter per track is about right. But navigating meat space and suffering the weary gaze of the GenX pincushion wasn't really worth it. More later.