Last time in Digging For Gold, we discussed the power of Social Media to grow the vinyl community. Through a few messages and exchange of want lists, I was able to not only add to my collection and help a fellow collector add to theirs but also built a connection and friendship with a local vinyl enthusiast. In this column, we will see how this new connection was able to quickly blossom into a more expansive group, with unlimited potential for future discussions, trades, and opportunities to grow our local vinyl community.
To pick up from the last column, I have a vinyl Instagram account, @vinyl_73. Through that account, a conversation was struck up with @vinyl_king28 and discussions and trades were to follow. After the initial trade, we started talking about expanding this to include other collectors in our area that may be interested. With that, we built an Instagram message group and started to add local accounts to the group to gauge interest. It wasn’t long before we had over 10 people in the group, and we started to look for a date and time to have an initial meet and greet, as well as a crate dig.
We settled on a day and place and invited anyone from the group that would be able to attend. We met for a coffee before one of our favourite record stores opened, then went to the shop to dig through some crates and get to know each other a little. I’ll tell you, you can find out a lot about people while digging through records, and we had great music discussions while perusing the store. A few of us also brought a “giveaway” crate, so others in the group could flip through them and take what they wanted. I felt this was a good way to break the ice, and get rid of some duplicate records that we simply didn’t want but others did. Several records changed hands this way, and there is a charity store in the same parking lot as the record shop, so what no one wanted we donated. We ended up donating a large stack of decent records that would surely make a few customers of the resale shop quite happy. We then decided to cap the afternoon off with lunch and continue to discuss our hobby, and also to get to know a little about each other on a personal level.
We were all able to add to our collections that day through trades with each other, giving records to each other and to charity, and supporting a local record store. After this meeting, we scheduled our next outings and have begun to get other local record stores on board for private diggings, discounts for the group, etc. We will continue to build the group and these connections, and hopefully, other cities and areas will follow suit. The records are obviously what brings us all together, but sometimes the “Gold” that we dig for can come in different forms.
You can see more of the records picked up through this and other deals on my Instagram account mentioned above. Until next time, good luck in your searches and keep Digging For Gold!
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