So I flew out, rented a truck, drove to the storage space, and then Tim and I spent seven hours loading boxes into the truck. I drove it all back to Massachusetts and unloaded it into my son’s room, odd spaces, wherever it could fit. The next couple months were spent sorting through Steve’s items and realizing, my god, this is enormous. Some is collectible material that anybody would be interested in; other pieces are interesting even if not official collectibles; and then there’s stuff that would be cool to fans of Steve’s because it’s an item he worked on or reviewed or owned. Like, oh, this is a copy of a record he played when he was in college, that kind of thing.
Are you doing all of the inventory yourself? Opening these boxes, sorting items into categories, researching their context, documenting them online—it seems exhausting.
Oh yeah. After dividing Steve’s belongings, I got everything archivally stored. That gave us a better reference for just how many items there were, and we decided to put some on the [Steve Albini’s Closet] website. So I put up about 400 things on the website. I thought it would be a fairly slow, soft opening. Then the first batch sold out so fast: All 400 items gone in a few hours.
The disadvantage of doing it yourself is that you’ve got to clean it, take the pictures, type a record description, grade the item, and all these things—like figure out if Steve actually worked on the record or not, because sometimes he used a fake name or asked not to be credited by a band. It ends up being actual research. That processing takes at least 10-15 minutes per item. After a couple weeks of doing this, I decided roughly 100 pieces per week is a good amount to list online. That’s a workload of 40 or 50 hours a week that I can do without feeling overwhelmed. You’ve also gotta factor in packing every item, printing labels, and dropping it off to ship. Plus, I create a certificate of authenticity for each item that’s printed, embossed, initialed, and put in a bag. Little things like that take more time than you’d expect, but 100 a week is doable. It’s a full-time job, but I still have a store, writing gigs, and readings that I have to juggle around.
Do you get a cut of the listing prices for the work that you’re doing? Does it all go to Heather?
Yes. Heather gets 75% of the total money made, and I get the other 25%, but the expenses come out of that 25%, too. Friends of mine who do this work pushed me to take 50%, but this is about getting money for Heather. I told Steve I would do this for him. And Steve was not a guy who wanted to squeeze the last dollar out of anyone, so I don’t want this to become something that’s really insane in terms of how things are priced.
What’s your criteria for discerning which items to sell on Discogs or eBay?
The plan was always to sell directly to people instead of going through established places like eBay and Discogs where you end up losing 25% off the top of anything you sell. Steve and I had talked about that: how do you cut out these middleman people who just gouge you for hosting? So my wife, Lili, who’s an IT person, built the website.
