Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: Metrowax Buys A Huge DJ Collection...Again

About 1/3 of the collection sits ready to rise.

Metrowax has bought a very large DJ collection from New York City only a few short days ago. We've been busy sorting, and so far, we are half done. There's definitely a lot of funk and disco, hip hop, reggae, and 80's records involved. There's also some club, freestyle, and house records, a lot of which are classics. The following pictures are some early finds from this collection:

Hip Hop #1

Hip Hop #2

Reggae #1

Reggae #2

Freestyle Stack

I'm about to go through that stack of freestyle right now, so they'll probably be up on the Metrowax website tomorrow.

Only about half has been dug so far, but we are starting to see that this one has a lot of interesting records, and also some great restock hip hop that we haven't seen in years. This new record collection will make for some exciting listings and record lots all summer long!

NEW! Some more pictures from this massive collection. I'm over half way through it! Sorting it by genre only for now. It's starting to make our little warehouse look even smaller.

Funk, Soul and Disco #1

Funk, Soul and Disco #2

Funk, Soul and Disco #3

We'll post even more pictures once we get them. I am also going to post these pics on our facebook page.

The Metrowax Rules For Shipping Pallets of 12" Records 

I want to take this opportunity to drop some knowledge. For starters, these type of large buys are never easy to pull off. There are always problems when sending large quantities of records no matter what carrier you use. If you don't know anything about shipping pallets of records, I will dish a few nuggets of advice for you, some of which I was reminded of again on this most recent purchase.

A Precarious Pallet!

1. Make sure the bottom boxes on the pallet are strong, well packed and 100% full, and taped off completely on all seams with a strong packing tape.  Two layers of tape won't hurt.  If one of the bottom boxes busts open during transit, you can have a situation where the pallets cannot be moved, and must be off-loaded on the spot, regardless of where the pallet is at the time.  Of course, this could also damage the records.  I would not recommend buying your record boxes at Home Depot.  They are weak and cannot hold the massive weight of records.  Packing the boxes 100% full of records is very important as well - it makes the boxes a lot sturdier.

2. Don't stack the boxes too high on the pallet.  Don't go more than four boxes high, preferably three. The reduced weight on the pallets will greatly reduce the chances for problems.  The above pallet was stacked five 62 pound boxes high from the bottom.  Also important is not to stack the pallet on top of anything, or stack anything on top of the pallet. Yes, shipping records is a pain in the ass.


3. Use adequate amounts of shrink-wrap, and wrap it around the boxes and the pallet, several times.  The idea is to connect the pallet to the boxes.  This is so the boxes don't slide all over the place during a rough ride on the freeway.  I can tell that the above shrink-wrapping job was poor.

Here's a surprising fact though: Records are very durable. Most of the time, they will arrive in the same condition as sent, even if the pallet does fail. Despite this, it's a good thing to try to minimize the inconvenience a busted pallet would cause en route. Somewhere there's a truck driver with a sore back now, since he helped me move the records off from this failed pallet and onto a waiting hand cart. But if you use these tips, you'll have no major problems sending or receiving albums by the pallet. Your driver will thank you for it.