Warehouse find of 45's: update

Excerpted article by Cathy Bernardy, Associate Editor Goldmine

Regular readers may recall that in December 2001 Goldmine reported on a warehouse find of 200,000 new records, mostly 45s from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, possibly the result of a distributor going out of business. The collection had been partially cataloged by the previous owner but was being finished by brothers Tom and John Gould, who purchased it, double-checking every one box of singles at a time.

After our original story ran in the Goldmine, the brothers did receive offers. "Clearly, your Internet posting of the article had significant impact," John Gould said. "Several folks were extremely intent-pleading-for the opportunity to purchase all of a particular artist or grouping artists, i.e. an Italian party wanted all of our Prince. A gentleman from Great Britain wanted all our Queensryche, Queen, and Robert Palmer. Another, all the Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, and ZZ Top. Others wanted all the LPs." Stateside offers came in from people in the music and entertainment industry.

But the Goulds wanted to finish the cataloging first. "We had to put everyone on hold because we really didn’t know all of what we had," he said. The conservative estimate on the cataloging efforts stands at 2,000 hours.

"Aside from finding 36,000 more records," Gould said, "during the process, I sustained serious injuries to my neck and spine from an accident at work. I’ve worked through rehab therapy for about 24 months, which slowed my work on the project considerably, but here we are."

Among the errors corrected in the original spreadsheet were not noting the difference between the 12-inch singles and 12-inch LPs, correcting entries from mislabeled boxes and adding the contents of those boxes that hadn’t been labeled.

The breakdown on what they call the "time capsule collection" includes nearly 3,000 different artists, 3,576 Capitol For Jukeboxes Only! 45s, such as colored vinyl Beatles releases of the mid-90s; 350 records with picture sleeves; imports from Canada, Great Britain, Germany and France; and 45s with rare B-sides or mono/stereo A-and B-sides. There are even some Disney storybooks with record, test pressings and records that were recorded from half-speed masters. The records take up seven 25-foot long rows of boxes eight feet high, and twenty three of the record-company pallets were still shrink-wrapped when the Goulds purchased them.

The brothers would first like to obtain offers for the entire collection and are even offering a "generous commission" to someone who "introduces them to the actual buyer of the collection."....