Though I rarely visit normal retail outlets anymore - and never make a
special trip to one anymore - I still do go out of my way to visit used CD
stores when I can. On my visit to northeastern Pennsylvania this month, I
had an opportunity to visit the Princeton Record Exchange, in Princeton, NJ.
They don't specialize in any particular genre, but their classical
selection is respectable. Their web site says they have over 150,000
titles of which 10,000 are classical, and I would guess that 60-75% of
these are used. Their prices and selection are in general pretty good.
I found the following:
Lindblad Symphonies #1 & 2 Marco Polo 8.225105
Shchedrin Piano concertos #1-3 BMG/Melodiya 36907
Onslow Sonatas for piano four hands Centaur CRC2393
Maw Flute quartet & piano trio AS&V CDDCA920
Varkonyi Piano trio & fantasy for viola Jerusalem 8701
The Bela Varkonyi (a Hungarian-born composer 1878-1946, anyone heard
anything else by him?) disc was only $4.99, and all the others were $6.99.
Most of the new CDs I saw were perhaps a dollar or two less expensive than
Tower. They do something rather old-fashioned in that they remove the CDs
from the cases, store the discs behind the counter, and display only the
case. Not much of a problem here, but I do like to be able to inspect the
disc itself when buying used CDs, especially when multiple copies are
available.
Overall, I had a good time, and will probably visit again when I'm in the
area. This is of the better used CD stores I've encountered. The store
is clean and well-lit, with a pleasant atmosphere (they played the Grateful
Dead the entire time I was there, though not at a distracting volume). As
with many other stores near universities, they have an eclectic selection,
especially of 20th century music. The emphasis seems to be on LPs, so if
this is your thing you'll probably have an even better time that I did.
Compared to the best used CD stores I know - Amoeba and Rasputin's, both
on Telegraph in Berkeley - PRE comes in second. I would recommend PRE, but
I'd urge any collector to schedule a trip to Berkeley if they are in the
San Francisco bay area, and reserve at least 3-4 hours to browse their
collections. In a little over an hour, I had seen everything Princeton
Record Exchange had to offer.
PRE has a nice web site, with excellent directions from just about anywhere
in the northeast. They can be found at:
http://www.prex.com/
Amoeba and Rasputin's have web sites too:
http://www.amoebamusic.com/
http://www.rasputinmusic.com/
Dave
[log in to unmask]
http://www.classical.net/
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