In a world where music is mostly only consumed streaming platforms or buying albums online, it seems like life has come a full circle with record sales really picking up again over the past few years.
While one the primary sourcing destinations to get your hands on vinyl would be dedicated record and vintage shops, another spot to grab some great bargains are at charity shops!
Speaking about a charity shop or a “bargain shop” as they’re also called, one can’t help but mention Oxfam. After recently celebrating their 75th Anniversary in 2017, Oxfam which is a charitable movement to end to g, has about 630 charity shops run by a staggering 23,000 volunteers and 10,000 Oxfam staff around the world! Oxfam is currently fundraising for the 500,000 Rohingya refugees leaving Burma.
An Oxfam store on Byres Road in Glasgow, Scotland raked in a cool £100,000 net prit over the last year purely from sale records, CDs, cassettes and instruments. This only helped reiterating the fact that there is still life in the charitable giving Vinyls and CD’s for a better good.
Manager the store, Andrew McWhinnie, has been with Oxfam since 2002, and employs a dedicated staff around 30 volunteers as he remains at the helm affairs at the Byres Road store.
Speaking about it and explaining further, he said
He also went ahead to explain what sets them apart from other record shops saying,
Stating some stellar and eye opening facts about Oxfam, iNews shared the below in a detailed report on the same:
- Oxfam shops sell almost £6.5m music every year, which equates to more than 2.5m CDs, DVDs and records every year, all donated by the British public.
- The largest single donation was 4,000 vinyl albums to an Oxfam shop in Devon in 2008.
- The Glasgow Byres Road music shop raised over £100,000 in the last financial year (net) alone to help fund Oxfam’s work.
- In Scotland, Oxfam has 45 shops in total supported by a network around 1,000 volunteers.
- £10 spent at an Oxfam shop could buy safe clean water for 10 people in an emergency; three buckets to keep water safe and clean; or one mosquito net to protect from malaria.
Also, in a surprise revelation, their most expensive single item sold was a rare Celine Dion cassette bought for £700 by a Gynecologist in Hollywood! Well, we’re not judging nobody here, the happy owners “heart will go on” in a sense contentment from this ownership, we hope!
H/T: Mixmag
