Its been a few months since I’ve shared a “This Place” post and it has been six months (yikes) since I’ve posted a vinyl hunt, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone today! Although I haven’t shared a vinyl hunt recently, I still go record shopping at least twice a month. I used to go once a week but work and other commitments got in the way. Last week, while I was helping my sister move into her new place, I discovered the cutest little record store: Laurie’s Planet of Sound (it’s literally 2 minutes from her apartment!) I love finding new (well, new to me anyway) record stores in Chicago! Last month (on my birthday) marked two years since I started collecting records! My collection isn’t halfway where I’d hoped it would be by now but it is coming along slowly but surly. Hence all the vinyl hunting!
I’ve been collecting records since I got my baby blue Crosley record player (her name is Little Darling) for my 21st birthday (which was about a year and a half ago.) Since then, weekly vinyl hunts have become part of my regular weekend routine. I love searching for new records, it just makes me so happy! In the past year and a half, I’ve collected around 60 records (hopefully I can cross “owning 100+ vinyl records” off my 25 before bucket list soon!) My collection is a mix of classics, newer artists, my favorite broadway and movie soundtracks and cool/random albums I found at thrift stores. I collect A LOT of things (Disney Pins, Funko Figures, postcards, movie tickets, Playbills and so much more) but of all my collections, I really want to start focusing on acquiring new records! Since buying records online takes the fun out of collecting, vinyl hunts have become my number one source for building my record collection. Here are the five tips I think every record buyer (novice or long time collector) should consider:
I had only one goal for this weeks Vinyl Hunt at Half Price Books: buy at least five new records! Realistically, I knew in order to buy that many albums (without spending an arm and a leg) most of them would have to come from the clearance/discount section. I’ve had a little bit of bad luck with record stores for the past few weeks. Either what I came looking for wasn’t there or things were just too overpriced! Me and record stores just haven’t seen eye to eye lately. Half Price Book was PACKED when I went on Saturday, and when I say packed, I mean PACKED! The lines were long, people were pushy and the store was in complete chaos! It seemed like everyone was trying to buy last minute Father’s Day gifts. When I got to the discount section it looked like it had already been picked over, so I’m guessing a lot of dad’s got records for Father’s Day this year?Continue reading →
This week I set off on a mission to find the vinyl version of the Black Key’s latest album TurnBlue. I really like the album but I’ve been holding off buying it on iTunes because the vinyl version comes with an additional MP3 download so it’s like killing two birds with one stone! I had heard through the grapevine that this album wasn’t going to be easy to find. In fact, I heard that it sold out in most record stores the day it was released! But that didn’t stop me from my vinyl hunting, so I decided to head to one of my favorite record stores: Reckless Records!Continue reading →
Its been almost two months (really?!?) since I’ve gone vinyl hunting (you can check out January’s vinyl hunt HERE) so I decided to spend Saturday afternoon visiting one of my favorite record stores: Half Priced Books! I love this record store so much because it’s half record store, half vintage book shop (talk about heaven!) This might sound a bit weird but I’ve come to love the smell of old books and dusty records!
