How Do You Sell A Record Collection?-Daddy's Music
As far back as I can recall, there was always music in my house.
Daddy loved music, particularly old country music. His favorite was Hank Williams, Sr. "Your Cheating Heart" and "Jambalaya" were as good as any baby's lullaby to me. It's the stuff I grew up on.
Daddy would spend hours upon hours rehearsing Hank's songs and imitating his sounds and facial expressions. Most would admit, that when he was painfully thin at 145 lbs and 6 ft tall, he did resemble the late Hank Williams Sr.
I've never known anyone to love music the way Daddy did. He loved anything dealing with music. He would cut out any article he every ran across that dealt with country music. He once bought out an entire record store that was going out of business. I guess I was around 10 years old when Daddy did that. I know I was pretty young because it took the boy down the street to really turn me on to music of my own generation and that was in the mid 70s when I was a pre-teen. I remember standing in the doorway of his bedroom with his mother as he cranked up his stereo as it played "Jive Talkin'" by the Bee Gees. I had to buy that 45 rpm for myself. From that point forward, I was torn between Daddy's music and my own.
I seemed to turn to Daddy's music when I was feeling blue. I think many will agree that old country music just knows how to reach a troubled soul. There is something so raw in the emotions that music can reach that really no other can do. When you're down, country music is there with you. It will soothe you and comfort you until you're ready to stand back up on your own.
Some of my favorites that I remember digging out were Roger Miller, Tex Ritter, Eddy Arnold, Willie Nelson, Hank Snow, Jimmie Rogers, Johnny Cash and so so many others.
How Do We Part With Daddy's Music?
Daddy died this past September. My mother is left with a house full of memories, collections of all sorts, and thousands upon thousands of records.
I have encouraged her to sell them when she's ready. It's a collection far too vast for either of us to maintain. She could certainly use the money. Who couldn't, right? But, I worry about her being taken advantage of. She deserves to get what they're worth. They worked hard to assemble this collection. It's a collection Daddy was very proud of.
I know Daddy would want Mama to benefit from it. In fact, I think it was the best way he knew to make sure she was taken care of, while at the same time, getting to enjoy it himself.
Where Do We Start?
I have contacted a record appraiser and he says the first thing any appraiser is going to want is an itemized list of all the albums, any specifics about condition, album cover condition, etc.
This seems like such a monumental task due to the vastness of this collection. I don't even know of a space large enough that I could take these albums to even begin to do this. Ideally, it would be best if a team of people could key in the data into a database.
I've thought about trying to set up a webpage where people can write to request certain albums or songs that they are looking for. Then, we can go look to see if he has it. Mama thinks he has them pretty well alphabetized. That will certainly help.
Has anyone gone through something like this? I'm sure someone has had a loved one with a substantial collection that needed to be appraised and somehow presented to an interested group of buyers. Let me know.