Only the British are polite enough to manage a vinyl giveaway like that. It would be a fist-flying 
mayhem in most US locales.

There's no shame in scavenging, none at all.

In the early days of eBay, I made very good money (to feed my music addiction back in the days when 
CD prices were fixed by the megaglomerates, before they got busted for price-fixing and collusion) 
by trolling local curbsides for cast-off computers at bulk pickup time. I'd strip out memory chips, 
video cards, audio cards and removable-media drives and sell them on eBay. I gave the carcasses away 
to various computer geeks I knew.

Then there's the most famous audio dumpster-dive in memory, when CBS Radio put all their old Ampex 
350 editing decks and a bunch more vintage equipment out in an alley. There was also regular good 
dumpster diving at the Hit Factory and Record Plant studios when they got rid of their old analog 
gear in the 80's and 90's.

In recent years, I've trolled bulk pickup piles for CD's and records and gotten lucky a few times. 
One haul was several hundred CD's from someone who must have put it all on their iPod and wanted to 
clear space. I sold it by the pound to a used CD store and used the proceeds to buy a couple dozen 
CD's for myself.

The best record haul I ever had was when a buddy of mine bought a house. The seller was divorced and 
her ex-husband had dropped dead. She just wanted rid of whatever of his stuff was left in the house, 
including the hundreds of LPs in the basement. My friend is strictly an iPod guy so he asked if I'd 
haul away the records. There were many gems in there, both in terms of valuable but more importantly 
in terms of great-condition albums that I enjoy hearing.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Biel" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Fw: Harold Moores


>  Note that "THEY PLAN TO REFILL THE SKIP ALL WEEK"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> This is a wonderful story with a great twist of irony in the video.  One British collector raves 
> that this is like Christmas, but then an American collector remarks that the great records are not 
> to be found here.  BUT, then comes a young British lass, obviously too young to remember when this 
> record came out, holding up the find that is especially exciting for her because it contains the 
> stars of the Goon Show, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Seacombe.  In case you do not 
> recognize it -- the only other copy of this record I have ever seen is the one I own, which 
> friends mailed me from England when it was new -- it is "How To Win An Election (or not lose by 
> much)"  Philips AL 3464 (A10779L) written by Leslie Bricusse, and recorded in 1964 with Sellers 
> doing his parts in the U.S. and mailing the tape to England.  Also in her hand is "That Was the 
> Week That Was" produced on Parlophone by George Martin in between the first several Beatles 
> albums.  I can't see if her copy is mono or stereo, but stereo copies were unobtainable in England 
> because they were all sent to the U.S. with Odeon labels pasted over them.  I hadn't known it was 
> available in the U.S. and my friends in England even tried a special order of the stereo but had 
> to send me a mono.  I found my stereo copy several years later when The Record Hunter on 5th Ave 
> were selling out the remainders of all of the Odeon paste-overs from Capitol Of The World.  I 
> think that those two albums would fetch perhaps $50 U.S. each on Ebay.  What ELSE is in the pile 
> she is holding???!!!!
>
> Ironically a friend on Facebook yesterday linked an article about some swimming pools NYC has 
> manufactured out of dumpsters and are placing them on city streets -- including Park Ave just 
> South of Grand Central Terminal  -- and I replied that this gives new meaning to dumpster diving. 
> Then another friend said that she hated shopping and I remarked that I love to shop for books and 
> records but not cars.  Now comes THIS!
>
> Actually Leah and I have a reputation around ARSC of not feeling that dumpster diving is beneath 
> our dignity when it comes to records.  And I know of collections of Old Time Radio that were found 
> in dumpsters.  Some irreplaceable Columbia matrix file cards were likewise retrieved from an early 
> form of dumpster.
>
> Back in the mid-60s I was in the middle of a mob scene at Bambergers Paramus NJ when they 
> advertised an open-reel pre-recorded tape sale at $1 each for Saturday.  There was a mob of men at 
> the doors when it opened at 10 AM and 600 tapes were gone in less than ten minutes.  I would dive 
> in and grab an armful and toss back the ones I didn't want and go in for another armful.  It was a 
> stereotypical mob scene like in Filiene's basement.  There was a similar but smaller mob at Sam 
> Goody's Paramus one day in the mid-70s when they put out a browser table which had the entire 
> Victor Vintage series cut-outs at $1.69 each.   That one I lucked into because the cut-out and the 
> sale were both unannounced.
>
> The records here bring to mind two things.  A few summers ago  Footlights in NYC sold out its 
> store stock at prices that eventually reached down to 50 cents in a store which specialized in 
> rare shows and personalities.  Leah and I went back there maybe ten times that Summer and got 
> perhaps a thousand LPs.  Some 50 cent records had original price tags of over $25 as they started 
> to bring out their back-room stock.  The other occasion these types of records seen in the 
> dumpster brings to mind is the classical section in this years Archive of American Music sale in 
> NYC.  Since they do not collect classical, all classical was priced at 50 cents.  Ironically, many 
> of them had stickers from my favorite NYC store, Acadamy. for 10 or 25 cents!  I should have 
> gotten them there, and many times I have.  Actually, one time Acadamy had five sealed boxes of 75 
> or so classical LPs by the door that were free.  So the next morning I took my car into the city 
> and took the boxes.  The Archive sale this year had sealed boxes of about 100 classical LPs each 
> by the door that were $5 a box.  As we were getting close to 200 records and LaserDiscs already I 
> didn't partake of any of the 5 buck boxes.
>
>  Then of course there are the occasional library sales we have had at ARSC and the Belfer sales in 
> Syracuse.  78 sales tend to be a little more reserved because of the fragility of the items, 
> Leah and I have developed a teamwork approach at these massive competitive sales, and it certainly 
> helps me to have someone young and nimble to help grab and guard, and having a second set of eyes 
> on the lookout has been very advantageous because she has found some great stuff I would have 
> missed.
>
> Mike Biel  [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> On 8/11/2010 4:13 AM, Steve Abrams wrote:
>> Here is a link to story and video :
>>
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10930145
>>
>> SA
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------
>> From: "Steve Abrams"<[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 8:24 AM
>> To: "Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List"<[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Harold Moores
>>
>>> Harold Moores is arguably the best record shop in London.  Yesterday they
>>> closed for refurbishment.  With permission from Westminster Council they put
>>> out 4,000 records in a skip.  I gather there was a riot, thanks for Twitter.
>>>
>>> Is there anyone on the List who can give a first hand account?
>>>
>>> SA
>>>
>>
>