Part 216: The Most Expensive Thing I Ever Destroyed

Ultimate

RECORD STORE TALES Part 216:  The Most Expensive Thing I Ever Destroyed

The most expensive thing I ever destroyed was a Michael Jackson Ultimate Collection 5  CD box set.  The discs were pretty hacked, but salvageable.  We had the means to repair such discs, but the deeper the blemish, the harder this is.  Retail price on it was probably around $55, we had sunk at least $20 or $25 into it.  We didn’t see too many of them, which is why one of the staff paid $20 or $25 for a hacked box set.

Four of the discs we were able to fix no problem.  One of them was really bad.  It had one deep scratch in it that just refused to come out.  Other staff members, even the guy who was generally the best at getting scratches out, had failed as well.  One night it was slow in the store so I decided to take another shot at it.

I could see the scratch, clear as a bell, but I couldn’t feel anything with my fingernail.  We must have buffed it down so close to the actual scratch.  I just needed to buff a little more…and then I applied a little pressure.  A little more.  Looking good.  A little more…

Then I felt the familiar, frictiony bite of the plastic in the CD melting.  Once you’ve melted a disc, it’s done.  Finished.  Garbage.  Worthless.  You can see, if you look close enough.  You can see a tiny deflection, a distortion, kind of like a hot road on a summer day.  Once the plastic is melted, your player’s laser is refracted and the CD will skip.  And it will probably skip very, very badly.

That’s how I destroyed an expensive and rare Michael Jackson box set, forever and ever.

21 comments

  3. That would tend to make you feel bad, wouldn’t it? It’s great that you tried to restore something that another person abused when using it, though. I’m really nitpicky about my records and CD’s, and have some classic albums that are over 40 years old without a scratch or smear. I never touch the surfaces. I once worked in a record store for four years, and it never ceased to amaze me how customers would bang things up, then try to return them. You probably see the same thing.

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    1. YES. I remember when the Garth Brooks box set came out. Some lady was selling her used copy, and she’d thrown out the box, the book, and the discs were all hacked to bits. And worst of all, she didn’t understand why ANYONE would keep the box or book. She thought they were MEANT to be thrown out.

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        1. She seemed perfectly normal by all appearances! Some people just don’t value the physicality of music, as bizarre as that seems :) It’s like those people that throw out the covers to their CDs and just keep the discs in the folders.

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        3. Dude, I know you applied and genuinely wanted to work in my store, but I think if you saw some of the tragedies that I saw, it would break your heart. Expensive and rare imports, cracked. Valuable bootlegs, turned into hockey rinks. Packaging and booklets destroyed by water damage. And people who don’t understand why that matters.

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        5. Yeah, my reaction was often to be pissed off as well.

          The one that pissed me off was this one guy who was always selling crappy cheapie compilation to us. He asked what would be worth me, and T-Rev said stuff that’s more rare. The next time he came in, he had Pink Floyd’s P.U.L.S.E. with the light bulb intact and working, a bit rare. But the two discs inside were HACKED. Just brutal. I was so pissed off that he fucked it up, and I couldn’t stock it. We ALWAYS needed more Floyd.

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        6. When my (then-girlfriend) wife and I moved in together, I only had one rule: CDs are held by the edge, and never, ever placed face down on anything for any length of time. Oh, and put the CD back in its proper case, not whichever one is convenient at the time. Too OCD? Heh, well, she married me anyway.

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  4. Probably a good thing, huh? I’d be pretty pissed off if anyone wrecked my stuff, too. When I was a teen, I didn’t let my younger siblings anywhere NEAR my records! So, I’ve always been OCD about that. What I hate now is those tight little cardboard CD sleeves that come with some special edition magazines. I’m always afraid the CD will get scratched. Some I’ve actually put in another case, just to keep it nice.

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    1. With the free magazine discs it doesn’t both me so much, I can understand the reasoning for a magazine CD. But when I paid good money for (for example) Mirror Ball by Neil Young, and the disc is all scratched up after 3 listens, that bugs me! I’m paying for physical product, give me a cover that won’t destroy it!

      I’m worried my Star Wars blu ray set will suffer that fate, the cases are awful.

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      1. I would definitely put them into some new cases, just to be sure they stay in decent shape for a long time. Say, do you have a solution for fixing a slightly warped album? I don’t know how it happened, because I’m so careful, but I have an old C.W. McCall “Wilderness” album that I cannot play because it got warped just enough to make it unplayable. (Yes, I have eclectic tastes in music. For a really strange one, you should hear Anthony Phillips’ “The Geese and The Ghost”).

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        1. Lol!

          I used to store the discs in a separate case for items like that. Now I just rip ’em and put them away.

          I don’t know of a way to fix a record. Sorry :(

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