I went on Sunday for the first time in ages and was stunned to find that it was mostly vinyl (probably 60 to 70%), about 15% CDs, very very few toys and a very much reduced comic section.
Vinyl has either made a major comeback or the fair organisers were deliberately encouraging it.
Unfortunately I was struck as usual by my modern disdain for looking through thousands of uncatalogued music looking for what I wanted. You may get a bargain, but you pay for it in lots of time and underarm sweat.
If anything foretold the demise of CDs it was this fair. Where previously a secondhand CD would be $15 to $20 and much more for collectables, at this fair CDs were usually $5 to $10, $15 for something special. Stunning.
I was surprised to see an audience-recorded-concert-DVD seller up the back. He was doing a roaring trade which confused me until I saw he was selling for $5 a disc. In the past a similar VHS might have sold for $35. How things have changed.
I bought both Moistboyz CD (with added Ween member) for $5 each, the original pressing of The Truth's debut (I only had the re-release) for $8, Therapy?'s "Nurse" (with extra Teethgrider) for $5 and Primary's debut EP "Vicious Precious" for $5. Bargain(s)!
I went with a very specific mission and failed. I've been hoping to find a stash of old US printed music magazines from January 1989 to March 1989. Unfortunately all of the sellers bulk sold their music mag stashes years ago. They're being drip fed onto eBay now for exorbitant prices.
I spent much of the late 90s cataloguing a huge stash of old magazines at a record shop. I wish I'd known then what I know now, I'd have paid more attention.
An archive that let you buy old magazine scans for $1 each would do a roaring trade. Cover To Cover is trying, but no-one seems to want to bite.
Instead we're stuck with a mishmash of commercial newspaper archivists selling 100 word OCR'd articles for $3 a pop. Disgusting.