Ok now much though No Parlez, SNF soundtrack and Nightflight To Venus are still vinyl gold, the list is seriously outdated @minibreakfast and surely doesn’t reflect the C21 CD racks in Save The Children, Oxfam etc. So let’s take the Most Donated List into the digital era and get your nomination for CDs that are ever-present on the charity shop shelves. one rule: from the CD rack only. My nominations:
Any Robbie Williams solo LP – this is by far and away the most likely
Scissor Sisters – especially the second album which had like no good songs on even if you thought the first did
All Saints
Blue
Any Britney Spears album
Sandi Thom (yes it’s a topical thread) the album with that song about punks and flowers
Any dance compilation with Kiss, Ministry of Sound, Bangers, R and B, Garage etc with the word ‘Anthems’ ‘Annual’ or the year attached
Albums you never find – any Now…. compilation older than about ten years
Over to you….
Dido albums especially No Angel.
It might be because the bright orange spine that means its always very visible, but there a lot of Version 2.0’s by Garbage out there on the racks of thift.
Travis are (or aren’t) doing very well either. Many copies of “The Man Who” have been abandoned and are looking to find their forever home.
racks of Thrift dammit
Racks Of Thrift – best prog band name that never was.
Those are two excellent spots – poor Fran. And that orange spine a dead giveaway
I spend a lot of time browsing in charity shops and two things about CDs strike me. The first is that despite her enormous popularity you never see an Adele CD – her customer base clearly regard her records as keepers. The second is that I swear I have seen more Athlete CDs than I would have though they sold new. Seriously, pretty much every shop I look in has at least one snuggled up next to the Robbie Williams CDs which MM correctly identifies as recurring stock.
The worst offenders for CDs in the chazzas round here are Steps, closely followed by the aforementioned Blue albums and dance compilations.
Oops, how could I forget the mighty S Club 7?
The debut album by Big Sur hitmakers The Thrills seems to be always on display in a charity shop here. Unless, of course, it’s just the one CD which is constantly being passed between the eight different charity shops.
Actually there is a huge overlap here between all of the above in Charity Shops and those on sale in Poundland as Replay. The Thrills are disproportionately represented in both, someone at the record label was overly optimistic.
REM’s Monster is surely the No Parlez of CDs.
There are two Charity Shops fairly close to me.
A couple of years ago I was perusing the CD selection more in hope than anything else and amongst the multitude of Britney Spears, Steps, Busted and Now albums, I spied faced with 5 Simon Webbe albums .
I went to the other shop, and there on the shelves were the usual Britney Spears, Steps, Busted and Now album, and another 5 Simon Webbe albums.
It may have been the same rack, and the staff just moved shops while I wasn’t looking.
Steps, Mika, Susan Boyle and Songs From The Musicals seem to be the most donated items in Reading.
Madonna – Music (always that one, rarely anything else by her)
The Feeling – 12 Stops and Home (shame – it’s a great pop album)
Good call on Robbie Williams and Scissor Sisters.
Those Madonna albums in ascending order of popularity:
Immaculate Collection
Confessions On A Dancefoor
Ray of Light
Music (by a mile)
Everything else not really frequent enough to warrant a chart position.
Popularity with CD racks, not popularity with people otherwise they would still have them.
I watched someone at a record fair the other weekend actually pay five whole pounds for a used vinyl copy of No Parlez.
He’d obviously never been in a charity shop.
Or heard No Parlez.
It was probably the rare Albanian pressing. Sounds unbelievable!
I found Now 1 a while back on vinyl and picked it up. Am I a millionaire?
If they are in good nick, I usually plonk them on ebay for a fiver or so, same for Vol. 2. So to answer your question: nearly!
Well, I’m in profit!
If you find a copy of Now 4 on CD it fetches upwards of £350!
It’s from 1984, the first Now to be released on Vinyl and at the time CDs were still in their infancy – vast majority would have sold on tape or vinyl.
‘Rarely anything else’ by Madonna? You must be joking!!!
I’m not going to (that’s NOT going to), but I could hoover up Madonna’s whole back catalogue on any of my local high streets in East London for £10. Probably twice over.
Lighthouse Family…..can’t move for the stuff.
Like trying to get dog shit off your shoe.
The individual CD I come across most, however, is the Manic Street Preachers one after the one with ‘Design For Life’ on it. ‘This Is My Truth’? You know the one.
I get a lot of old 60s records this way, but only because I go to quite a few charity shops but, actually, The Beatles and The Stones appear to be ‘keepers’.
I’ve yet to see a copy of the Dick Tracey or Evita soundtracks ! Like A Virgin, True Blue and Like A Prayer I think are ‘keepers’ as we are now calling them. I’ll admit Erotica and all her recent stuff after Confessions… may trouble the charity racks.
Where is @beany ?
See this morning’s post. I was over in the wilds of deepest Yorkshire. Leeds in fact. While I was there I probably visited 8 charity shops on my way to an evening event. I bit rushed and I only bought one LP & 3 books. The 2 CDs were new ones from Jumbo Records (but still bizarre).
Guess which LP has just been reissued on brand spanking new vinyl? Leo Sayer’s Endless Flight!
Anyway…I digress. I nominate the boxes of unwanted CDs & DVDs that were freebies in the tabloids a few years back. From the Daily Star to the Sunday Times but mainly from the Daily Mail. Many charity shops sell them for 10p or just ask for a donation. There have been some interesting releases for collectors that do not appear very often; Elvis Costello, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Marillion, etc. I have hundred’s of the buggers.
Me too. The Bowie iSelect one is a very decent collection of his own choosing, so we were told. In addition a trawl through these can reveal some of the best films ever made for pennies. I can’t remember the last time I found a new one as I already have so many and the trend for giveaways passed, but if you don’t already have them cluttering up your home they’re well worth a look.
That Peter Gabriel one that came with the Daily Mail was very good and definitely a keeper.
Traditionally it’s been the teen pop bands/artists who fill up the charity shops as soon as they go out of favour – Blue, Steps, Robbie W, 5ive. But it’s noticeable that with “Da kids” just downloading & able to delete immediately, there are fewer of these,
In fact with nearly everyone steaming & downloading, there are very few CDs from 2012 onwards…Unless you know different (as Esther Rantzen used to say)
That should have said streaming, but steaming works as well – Never go round charity shops after a few pints or you’ll end up buying all the Robbie, Blue, 5ive etc
Significant showing for The Thrills, Scissor Sisters and Franz Ferdinand in my bit of North London.
Up/down here in Lichfield it is all ISB, Van der Graaf, Zappa, Tom Waits, unlistenable tosh the lot.
I love the second Scissor Sisters’ album…it’s their best one IMO!
I’d give you the update on Stockholm charity shops, but for the life of me I can’t remember – I know there are three names in particular that keep showing up in the racks, but my mind is completely blank at the moment…
Boy and girl groups aside, it’s that CD heavy period of U2/REM/Oasis/Blur and indie-type stuff from about 1990 onwards that I see most of.
Frank Ferdinand, including all their CD singles, and that Travis CD are more common than Barbara Windsor in ‘Carry on Camping’.
It begs two questions – ‘where did all the tape cassettes of those releases go?’
And – ‘if you really want Travis’s CD, why has it taken you so long to buy it?’
Back to Madonna.
Yesterday I went into just the one charity shop, a rarity for me, Oxfam in Walthamstow.
‘Like A Virgin’.
‘Music’ (it’s everywhere!).
‘Dance Floor’.
‘Bedtime Stories’ (is that one?).
The only where she’s dressed up like a soldier.
That, round here, is an average haul and, at £1.99 each, the punter might as well hang back and get them all for 50p each elsewhere.
A quick trip into town yesterday reminded me that Il Divo are charity shop heavy hitters too.
I have just booked myself into a Bristol city centre hotel on the weekend before Christmas for the *sobs* final ever Stackridge shows. It also gives me plenty of time to visit all the charity shops in the area. Research you know. Any pointers greatly appreciated. Emmaus is definitely on the list.
I’d say the two bands I see most of are:
1) Ash
2) Travis
but the de rigeur album in any second hand/charity shop is Be Here Now.
Saturday’s Chaka shop visits reminded me of another one. Apparently by law every charity shop must have a copy of Mylo’s Destry Rock and Roll on the racks.