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Comment by davemel37 | Hacker News Reader

On this note, I met an entrepreneur in Maryland making hundreds of millions by buying (or getting for free) used music cassette tapes and scratched cds, and cleaning them up, repackaging them and selling them at gas stations throughout the US. There is still gold in them circle things and them thar hills.

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You cannot do millions doing that kind of job all by yourself. So I guess that you need a whole company for it, which implies managing people, money, paying salaries, taxes, etc. It's not only "cleaning scratched cds".

Yes, he has a massive warehouse with a huge operation. He also sells dvds to walmart.

Edit: he also sells used video games.

PSA: Just because a dvd is shrinkwrapped, doesnt mean it is new.

I may have seen him doing covert advertising on reddit.

Scratched cassette tapes?

scratched cds. They buff out the scratches, repackage it and sell it for a few bucks at truck stops and gas stations through America.

I understand how some people might buy CDs, but I can't believe there is a multimillion market out there for them. Maybe he made his millions one or two decades ago?

I think you might be out of touch with reality. Consumer technologies die slowly.

CDs are in decline, but they're still a huge market (many, many millions). Consider just the millions of used cars out there which only take CDs and you can see why the market is still probably a huge business.

46% of music industry revenue still came from CDs in 2014. [0] That's at least hundreds of millions of dollars.

[0] http://www.ifpi.org/facts-and-stats.php

I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it. (we were running a p2p used video game marketplace, and went to him to help cover inventory gaps.)

The next time you are driving through any random state and stop at a gas station or truck stop, you will see cassette tapes for sale. Those are from this guy.

You also have to consider he operates on massive margins. He gets his good for next to nothing and sells it for several dollars.

That's very cool. I'm sure he operates with margins that most companies only dream about.

New cars only started getting streaming or aux audio input capabilities in the past 5 years. Most people still own CDs to play when they're driving because they have no other option.

An FM transmitter that attaches to a smartphone gives a perfectly clear signal, costs less than $7, and only requires a cigarette lighter, standard in cars since the 1920's, and FM radio, standard since the 50's.

I have an FM transmitter, and I still keep a CD in the player in the car and use that more often. It takes time to get everything hooked up.

On drives greater than 30 mins, it's worth it, but if I'm just going someplace ten minutes away (i.e. most of my driving), well I'd be adding an extra 2-3 minutes just hunting down the cord, plugging it in, launching the player, choosing what I want to play, etc.

Meanwhile my CD player starts the instant I turn on the car.

That being said, I did get a Bluetooth FM transmitter recently that has a built-in SD card slot and starts transmitting the SD card music the instant you plug it into the cigarette lighter, so that may eliminate my need for CDs.

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