CD longboxes
Sometimes just checking something out can reduce the odds of you acquiring a mess of a headache.
Someplace, somewhere online (who knows where? I’m looking at a couple hundred Web sites and mailing lists a day. I know. That’s way too much.) I read that something about the alleged collectability of compact disc longboxes.
For a gallery of what longboxes looked like, go here. These were long, thin cardboard boxes that held compact discs for display when they were originally being issued in the late 1980s. The primary reason for longboxes was music stores were equipped to carry 12-inch by 12-inch record albums, and the longboxes could sit in them alongside albums during that brief stretch when vinyl and CDs co-existed.
At the previously mentioned online someplace, I read that longboxes were going for considerable amounts on eBay. Not including the discs, the boxes were alleged to be fetching $30 to $50 for specific titles.
AUGH!
For a while, I carried a number of empty longboxes around with me, from move to move, residence to residence. I distinctly remember hanging on to XTC’s “Skylarking,” just because it was so cool. Even now, something in the back of my head says I might – just might – still have somewhere in some box the longboxes of the first four Beatles CDs I acquired. (They were Christmas gifts from the lovely Mrs. Cain in 1987, the year they were re-released).
But eventually, they were all (including, I suspect, those Beatles ones) tossed in the garbage, part of my awful carbon footprint.
I’ve been keeping an eye on eBay recently, and feel fortunate to report that the reports of $30 to $50 for empty longboxes are exaggerations. The prices I see are $3 to $5. And very few people seem to be bidding.
(You can, of course, ASK for $30 to $50. GETTING it is quite another thing.)