It’s late 80s and my weekly budget is around 50 Deutsch Mark for records.In recent weeks many people in my area are playing a pyramid scheme and need cash, which makes them sell items for which there are second hand shops, such as records. I do my weekly round through the usual places and it seems that the disco crowd is full of suckers who need to liquidate their assets: I end up spending 100 Deutsch Mark on about thirty 2nd hand WestEnd, Salsoul, Atlantic, Cotillion and other major and minor label disco and boogie funk 12” singles, thinking this is the best haul in ages. I need to go to a bank and take an unusual route through the Horten department store which unexpectedly has crates of US cutouts at 99 Pfennig (1DM), many I have never heard of, but I pull half a dozen just based on interesting names, labels or covers: Count Cool Out, Tyron Thomas & The Whole Darn Family, Jimmy Spicer, Maximus Three, Don Thompson, Terry Lewis and Wildflower came from there, I remember. There is so much that I have never heard of and the prices are cheap, but despite having had the collector’s bug for a while, I feel awkward doing more blind purchases as I have another big expense ahead of me: I need to stop at a bank to withdraw DM 400 as I am going on a skiing holiday the next day. With cash for the vacation in my pocket I have one final stop on my weekly tour at the Saturn Hansa chain which actually is at this time the best place to get the latest release. I know the buyer there and he will be OK to hold everything I might want for another week or two as I can not justify buying anything anymore today. To my relief he tells me that there isn’t much new stuff of interest, no must-have imports which quickly disappear and the German releases are all going to be around after my vacation. But, he says, “come with me to the warehouse as I have bought a ton of one-off old stuff from an importer in Hamburg [I think they went by the name of “Turning Wheel”] You can pull what you want for 10DM each but tell me how I should price some of these when I put them on the shop floor”. I end up spending my entire vacation money and go home with 40 albums by Leo’s Sunshine, Sidney Joe Quails, Sheree Brown, Khemistry, six of Cameo’s first nine albums, MCB, Don Blackman, Bobby Glover, Roger, ADC Band, Tomorrow’s Edition, Sunfire, Rhyze, Headhunters and others. In the evening I am financially and mentally exhausted and call a friend, the most hardcore collector I know to tell him which doubles I left standing at Saturn and that he needs to go there in the morning. He listens and tells me that first he needs to go back to the main train station. When I ask what he’s talking about he tells me that he stumbled across the department store crates and bought more than 100 funk, soul, disco and early hip hop records at 99p each, wasn’t able to carry them home and put them into 24hour lockers at the station.Golden days.