judge, jury, and estimator

By Todd Stadler · Thursday, June 21, 2001 12:00am

Ooh, ooh, ooh! I hate selling my CDs at Everyday Music. They have a way of making me feel so stupid.

I wanted to sell some CDs I really don't listen to very much, so I could indulge myself in some new CDs I would hopefully like more. But it's like some test of one's self-worth or something.

Of course, I wasn't so fond of the CDs I was selling. Otherwise, I wouldn't be selling them. But they weren't bad! I was really happy to own them at some point in my past. And I'm sure some reasonably cool person somewhere would still be happy to own these tunes.

But you wouldn't know that from the people behind the counter at Everyday Music. With a grim face, they accept your CDs for evaluation, dubious that anything much could come from your music collection. After all, they work in a record store or whatever.

So while I was being ranked on a scale from one to ten, one being the owner of 4 Non Blondes' Bigger Better Faster More! and ten being something I can't even guess at, I perused the stacks of new and used CDs, hoping to find some good music to fill in the holes I'd recently left.

I found some old Aphex Twin, and the latest from Radiohead and the Chemical Brothers. I need more computer-working music for my copious free time at home, and these records filled that need.

I also looked at some other stuff on my "to buy" list, listened to some tracks to see if I really wanted to purchase it, or if there was only a few good songs. It turns out I needn't have bothered.

For the nine CDs I decided I could part with, I was offered eighteen dollars. Two dollars a CD at a store that will pay up to four. That hurts.

So I asked what the breakdown was. He told me what each CD was worth to the store. Five of the CDs were worth seventeen dollars, for a respectable average of over three dollars a disk. I could deal with that, since much that I was selling wasn't exactly popular.

But that meant that the other four CDs were worth a quarter each. A quarter! That's practically the chemical value of the CD, what with the aluminum and all.

And who were these purveyor's of this land's most worthless rock? Morella's Forest, Danielson, and Spookey Ruben. Sure, you may not have heard of them, but I don't know much about you, either.

Still, it's not like I was trying to sell a Celine Dion CD, or Creed, or other such drivel. And yet in a twist so ironic, it seems plucked from a Home Improvement script, those artists would probably be worth more to the Most Esteeemed Estimators at Everyday Music, because someone wants to buy those albums.

In addition to being highly annoying, this fact is how I eventually comforted myself as I walked home with three new CDs and a wounded ego. I'm simply too esoteric for your average music consumer.

After all, a little self-righteousness makes us all feel better.