Signed CDs in the Collection
I have been buying and collecting CDs since the 80's until the stores stopped selling them around 2010. This collection started when my Dad came home from the US in 1984 bringing with him one of the first CDs to ever come out of the US market. It was a CD of Pat Benatar from her Live from Earth Album with the hit song Love is a Battlefield and Yes Owner of the Lonely Heart 90125 album.
Thirty years after, I have collected around 2K CDs with complete Albums and sets (mostly 80's and alternative rock, up to the time when the the CD stores closed) of The Beatles, Queen, U2, The Police, The Cure, Madonna, Green Day, Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Stone Temple Pilots, Dishwalla, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, and many more.
My two favorite Filipino Artists to collect are Ryan Cayabyab and Eraserheads. I completed the collection through buying the physical CD in stores, here and abroad, and when the stores disappeared- online. Nowadays majority of buyers online are collectors and their prices have skyrocketed drastically due to increasing demand triggered by aggressive bidding and buying by these avid collectors during auctions. The same thing has been happening in the Philatelic and Art world. Well, you can't put a price on how much someone would spend to acquire something! That's their right.
When Spotify came, I stopped buying CDs. I only buy rarely online to complete some collections. The Eraserheads box set I bought for a few hundred pesos before now cost 50K online and is so difficult to find. Just like vinyl records now, I feel that CDs will be highly collectible items in the future.
No feeling can match the ritual of opening the CD and smelling it, inserting it into the player, watching it rotate, sitting down admiring the cover artwork, reading the insert notes and lyrics while listening to the music with CD clarity. It is an experience CD lovers and audiophiles pursue and cherish- something the new generation haven't experienced and therefore can't relate to.
The joy of anticipation is lost in the new generation because everything is readily available. Life is a journey and the fun is not on the arrival but the process of arriving. That is why I defer giving all out to my children. They should either work for something they like or prove why they deserve to have such thing.
A favorite in this collection, is the Eraserheads box set. It is in mint condition and contains their complete studio albums, a book and T-shirt. I have also collected the CDs of each former members after they split like Ely Buendia as solo artist and his numerous collaborations with other artists like with Beware and Francis M, his bands The Mongols, Pupil and The Oktaves. Raimond Marasigan's Pedicab, Cambio and Sandwich, Marcus Adoro's Markus Highway and Buddy Zabalas Moonstar 88, Cambio and The Dawn albums where he played as bassist. Other Collectibles of Eraserheads include their book- Fruitcake, T-shirts, a signed drumstick (given by my youngest sister, Mary) and a limited CD that came issued in Esquire magazine.
As a Beatlemaniac, I also have more than 40 Beatles albums including the CDs of the individual members John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Paul McCartney with his band Wings and as soloist. I also collect VCDs, books, stamps and paintings portraying them.
The CDs featured here are not really my favorites except maybe for David Lanz and Ryan Cayabyab but we had them signed during concerts and accidental encounters.
"We don't own our collection, we are just keeping them for the next generation". Hope the next generation keeps them well. If they don't like it, better give it to a museum or to someone who will appreciate it".
We brought nothing into the world, and we will take nothing out of it (1 Timothy 6:7)
After a show in a Cebu mall
Our young people think about nothing more than love affairs and pleasure. They spend more time attempting to seduce and dishonor young women than in thinking about their country's welfare. Our women, in order to take care of the house and family of God, forget their own. Our men limit their activities to vice and their heroics to shameful acts. Children wake up in a fog of routine, adolescents live out their best years without ideals, and their elders are sterile, and only serve to corrupt our young people by their example.
Dr. Jose Rizal