We're moving to a new house in May, and in preparation several boxes of old clothes were brought to the local Salvation Army. It's been a few years since I checked out the used record section at this location. My last visit uncovered a few dozen records - but now there are several shelves of records flip through.

Some days, nothing beats digging through crates of dusty old records. The cover art can be entertainment enough! It's an eye opening lesson in the do's and dont's of graphic design. And at 49 cents each, you can't feel too bad picking up a dud or two. They can always be returned to the Sally Ann if there's nothing to sample or listen to.

The rules I follow are pretty simple. If you run across four copies of the same record in the same place, chances are it was quite popular upon it's release and should generally be avoided.

The gems are the locally made records that were released on small labels and given out to friends and family... pressed up but rarely listened too. Occasionally people will dump their entire collection, and good or bad it will always have a particular vibe. Good if they were into 1970s funk and disco, bad if it's the entire output of the Irish Rovers.

Best find this last trip? 1952 soundtrack to the French movie "Jeux interdits ". Let's see what's on here...