Impulse Buys - Portable Record Player

Tim is riding in the Heart and Stroke Ride for Heart in Toronto on June 3rd. As part of his fundraising efforts, we're having a garage sale on May 12th. (If you want to donate, click here: Donate to Tim - and thanks!) So I've been cleaning out the apartment (good excuse to get rid of a whole pile of stuff before we move at the end of May) and Tim (who doesn't really own anything himself except travel souvenirs and camping gear) has been accepting donations from friends, family, coworkers . . . Anyone like me who is a recovering borderline hoarder. One of the guys he used to teach with in Cobourg said that he would sell Tim an old record player and a bunch of records for $20 for him to put into the garage sale. Unknown to him, Tim has been dreaming about owning a record player for years.

So Saturday afternoon Tim was napping because he spent all day moving his non-existent stuff (I have no clue why it took so long when he literally has three pieces of furniture, clothes, artwork and camping stuff - wait until we actually move and my stuff takes two cube vans). I was in the bathroom in my delicates curling my hair for my birthday party, trying to avoid the inevitable burning of my forehead/ears/nape/fingers. I wasn't expecting anyone for the party for another hour at least and none of my friends really knock any more. They're well trained enough to just let themselves in. So when someone knocked on the door I was a bit surprised. If I had known it was just our friend Dawn dropping off the stupid record player I wouldn't have burned myself trying to unravel the curling iron out of my hair. Thankfully it was just her, though, considering I was the crazy-looking girl answering the door clutching a bathrobe to myself with part of my hair in gigantic curls and the rest of it clipped into a big mass sliding partway across my forehead. Embarrassment aside, the record player was ancient and the orange pleather/leather/plastic ottoman that held all the records STUNK. Like it had been stored with the effects of an entire retirement home in a barn for decades. And Tim, in his usual state of ecstatic excitement, unloaded the damn thing right into the middle of our living room, which was clean and all ready for our party guests.

Setting aside my annoyance, the record player itself is pretty neat. It's a Philco portable unit with enclosed speakers. It has a little damage to the outside of the case, but the inside is in pretty good shape. Not only does the unit work, but it came with a few replacement parts as well. It took Tim quite a few tries to figure out how to get the record to seat and play - the mechanism to drop the record is pretty violent! We're definitely going to have to do some record shopping, though, since he plans to keep the unit. The records that came with it are mostly really old country and gospel. Tim was trying to date them and they seem to mostly be from the fifties and sixties - Johnny Cash, Ferlin Husky, Bill Anderson. But a group of them are from the thirties and forties, and we think a couple may even be as old as 1903. We're going to have to find a reputable dealer somewhere. An old friend's Dad used to own a store in Ottawa, I've sent her husband a message to see if I can get his contact info. These might actually be worth something. I doubt they'll make the yard sale if they are. Either way, it was pretty nostalgic to be sitting around listening to records on a Sunday afternoon!