Thanks to Largeheartedboy who keeps an eye out for music-related news and articles, I read this rather tragic story of a guy who lost a sizable part of his record collection moving cross-county. This topic is one that keeps me awake nights sometimes. Like Dave, the author, I have a pretty sizable collection that grows seemingly daily at times. I’ve been collecting CD’s and records since the 80’s so I have amassed a large pile of CD’s and a recently-growing collection of vinyl. I can say that I empathize with Dave in that I had CD’s stolen out of a vehicle in the pre-mp3 player days when I typically carried around 30 or 40 CD’s in my car at any given time. Since they were stored in those flipbook storage cases I was left with the cases and no discs. These cases and cover art were literally empty reminders of the lost music and collected together in a couple boxes as a timecapsule of what I was listening to at the time– Cracker Gentleman’s Blues, a couple of Ani DiFranco discs, my Smithereens collection, Big Star #1 Record/Radio City, Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend, Pink Floyd The Wall, Robert Plant’s first two solo albums, Pearl Jam Ten, Bettie Seveert Lamprey, California Guitar Trio collection which included a very out-of-print Yamanashi Blues and many more…

Over time, I have replaced these CD’s as I find them in used shops or Amazon, or via Lala.com which is a CD trading site. Actually, Lala helped replace a lot of them. I still have a number I need to find and I may never find all of them to replace as some of the titles I lost are out-of-print. But, it gives me something to keep an eye out for in my regular record shopping.

I don’t know what I’d do if I lost my entire record collection. I’m sure I would, like Dave, really mourn the loss and have to cope, but I guess the upside would be that I could start the search again. Just as many of the records I have found over time have interesting stories about my life, or how I came to find the records, so would the future purchases.

Just as in Dave’s story, I have learned something from my loss and really that’s the important thing– learn from your mistakes.