The Price is Right!

In the mid 1990's I got into thrift store ( and garage sale and second hand store and swap meet ) records in a big way. I'd always been partial to vinyl but the majority of my collection up until then consisted of punk and soundtrack LPs. As has happened for many people a stack o' Herb Alpert wax I found at a garage sale started me off on an adventure into unknown ( or long forgotten ) sounds . My musical ears were opened and I was soon grabbing up Latin, Exotica, Easy Listening, Big Band, Kid's records, Surf, etc as fast as I could plunk down my dime, quarter or loonie.

A few years into this collecting I started to realize that in cleaning these 1950's to 1970's treasures I'd often thrown out the remnants of old price tags ( sometimes on old shrink wrap, sometimes on the cover itself ) and that maybe I should save a few. My dusty thrift store record collecting days are mostly behind me now ( although not the swell music they brought me ) so what we have here today is a sample of some of the price tags I managed to hang on to.


A few are from vintage, non-record thrift store purchases but the majority are original price or sale tags mainly from Canada and the U.S but also the U.K., all glued, taped or otherwise stuck to the covers or labels of records I picked up.



The former owners often personalized their platters as well. Address labels, shipping labels, and even a cigar band were all affixed to the records. One of my five great NORAD Commanders LPs came, not unsurprisingly, with an address label from a Colonel from Colorado Springs, Colorado. I highly doubt that the record with the cow sticker had bovinian origins though.

Then of course there's the odd assortment of items I've found INSIDE thrift store record sleeves, from melancholy family photos and Jello salad recipes to hand written lyric sheets and a crisp $10 bill! But that, as Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai used to say, is fodder for a future post!