Come Crate Digging With Me!
A journey to find the best sounds and albums.
What is ‘Crate Digging,’ you ask?
Crate digging is an adventure where one looks for the perfect vinyl albums to add to their collection. It is also an experience of the senses and beyond: sound, soul, and memory.
Where can I go crate digging?
A person can go digging at a thrift shop, music store, flea market, garage sale, or any place that sells vinyl albums. Each of these places has a unique inventory, but my favorite place to go is either a local thrift store or my local music store.
Why these two places you ask?
THRIFT SHOPS
In thrift shops, I have found many additions to my collection that I probably never would have found in a music store because thrift shops generally offer collections of random albums without any rhyme or reason as to how they are catalogued. Also, these albums were likely donated by someone and part of another collection. This is where one can find that hard-to-get limited pressing/release that we collectors call ‘Holy grails.’ The only drawback is that the condition of many vinyl in thrift shops must be inspected because they are usually sold ‘as is’ without a grading system that one can find in a music store.
MUSIC STORES
Music Stores have a much wider selection than thrift shops and organize vinyl by artist and genres of music. For example, two of my favorite places, Bullmoose in Concord, NH and Music Connection in Manchester, NH are organized by genre then sub-divided further artist so it makes finding a specific artist that much easier, rather than sifting through a pile of twenty-five to fifty albums in random order. Another benefit of a music shop is that they carefully examine and grade vinyl by condition and price them accordingly. (You should still take the vinyl out of the jacket and inner sleeve to judge for yourself.) This benefit pleases my wife very much as I can quickly hop over to the Hair Metal section and quickly grab that Dokken or Twisted Sister album I don’t have. (Don’t tell her that I still look through 95% of the store before leaving and this is why it takes me at least an hour for each visit. One simply cannot spend less than this amount of time looking, I think.)
How do I dig?
The process varies per person but my process is pretty simple:
I pull the album I want from the crate and do a visual inspection of the jacket for ring wear (the discoloration or indent made by a vinyl on the jacket), cuts (some promo albums and overstock albums have cuts in the jacket that don’t affect playback but were done for markdown purposes when the album originally sold), and rips and tears. If it passes visual inspection, I move onto the next step.
I take the album out of the inner sleeve and look for surface scratches (some light scratches can cause popping sounds during playback while some deep scratches and damage your stylus), then I do the eye level test to see if the album is warped (some albums might look good from a quick visual inspection and you might not notice), and lastly, I check the album for liquid damage. Why liquid damage? This type of damage is the hardest to spot but if it has been there long enough, it can create mold in the grooves and could pose issues during playback and to your health (this is also the rarest type of damage but is common at flea markets or garage sales).
The last thing I do is check the price based on my above findings. In a perfect world, price would not be a factor and I would pick up every Grateful Dead live album out there, but I really don’t have the deep pockets for that. Many times I have passed on an album simply because I saw it somewhere else for a few bucks cheaper.Â
In closing my friends, happy digging and let me know if you have any questions! Don’t forget to subscribe and stop by my Facebook page for exciting live streams and music reviews.
The Crate Diggers Brew - Hot Chocolate
I tend to go crate digging early in the morning to beat the crowds of people who will pile into the stores and make my digging process significantly more difficult. Anyways, my go-to brew during these cold winter months is a home brewed hot chocolate with marshmallows.
8 ounces skim milk
1 hot chocolate packet (I prefer Swiss Miss but any kind will do)
Assorted Sized Marshmallows
