From storage to stereo

As the idiom states, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Nowhere may this statement hold truer than at the Vintage Vinyl used record sale. Held at the former location of Baskin’s clothing store at the Lincoln Square Village on Saturday, May 16, Vintage Vinyl is a community-wide sale of donated LPs, CDs, cassettes and audio equipment. Deane Geiken, director of the Illinois Radio Reader, explained the process behind organization for the “15th or so” year of Vintage Vinyl.
“We started collecting in early April (though collection can start off-handedly as early as September) and have begun sorting, separating, catagorizing and alphabetizing material. This will occur until Friday, the night before the event,” Geiken said. The electronic assortment is heavily varied, and Geiken underestimates the vinyl selection to number around 50,000 items.
Vintage Vinyl will be held from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. with a wavering entrance fee. From 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., there is a $5 admission fee, while entrance is free from 11 a.m-3 p.m. The sale will close for one hour to reorganize from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. before opening again with half-priced merchandise until the event closes at 6 p.m. Merchandise prices start low, with all vinyl priced at $1 unless otherwise marked. “It’s one day only, so if you want to get the good stuff, I suggest you get there early,” Geiken said, explaining that in the past, a line for entrance has formed as early as 6 a.m.
For the past three years, all proceeds from Vintage Vinyl have gone to support the Illinois Radio Reader. Sponsored by WILL, the broadcasting service of the University, IRR is a radio news service providing information to the blind and visually impaired community in east central Illinois. Illinois Radio Reader features programming that covers local and national news outlets from the Wall Street Journal to the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette and several other local publications, books, medical care issues, entertainment and narration of public television shows. The volunteer-based initiative reads the aforementioned items aloud to a digital recording system, which is later broadcast over a special subfrequency radiowave.

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