Last month, I saw an ad on Facebook Marketplace that read “1,000 CDs for $50.” Thinking it must be some kind of typo, I reached out to ask if the number of discs, and the price, were correct. The seller answered in the affirmative, but told me I “had to come get them before 4 pm.”

One of the disadvantages of being an adult is unfettered access to your own money, and the above scenario is the perfect illustration why. I habitually browse Marketplace looking for strange deals on weird items, for which I have no need and limited space to house. And yet, it compels me.

This CD windfall also felt like fate: I had been casually looking for a source of bulk CDs from a very specific decade for a certain project (more on that later), but hadn’t had any luck outside of the usual online resellers asking near-retail prices.

With a per-unit cost of $0.05, and self control functioning at a vestigial level, how could I say no? Following the seller’s directions, I ended up at a small row of storage lockers, where I was whisked through the gate and directed to a unit which had a stack of apple crates sitting in front of it—packed to the brim with CDs.

I had no real expectations for what kind of bounty I’d find in what I hoped was a potentially promising trove of music. I did a quick scan through the titles I could see, telling the seller I wanted to make sure I wasn’t buying a pallet full of Christmas tunes, but he assured me it was a fairly robust mix. “No punk, and no metal either,” he told me, semi-apologetically. He explained that the CDs came from thrift stores, but it was unclear as to whether he was a supplier, or was buying up old inventory from out-of-business shops.

It was at this point that I realized I might have bitten off more than I could chew. Not from a responsibility standpoint, but purely considering logistics. Without really thinking, I had agreed to pick up my digital audio cargo with perhaps the smallest car currently on the market, a Fiat 500e, whose interior volume could best be described as “thimble-like.”

I folded the rear seats down and discovered that unfortunately, instead of lying fully flat they provided the perfect ski-jump angle to tilt the giant CD boxes into the rear glass, making it impossible to close the hatch. Worried that I might have to spend the entire hour and change drive home balancing jewel cases on my lap, I engaged in some quick box-Tetris that tagged in the front seat, where I had boxes stacked nearly to the windowsill hoping to avoid box-Jenga. A tight fit, and if I was involved in any kind of unexpected braking maneuver or T-bone collision I’d end up looking like the Cenobite DJ from Hellraiser III, but I had no one to blame but myself for my lack of foresight.

Having made it back safely, I unloaded the crates into my garage and began the process of sorting the good from the bad from the weird. It turns out that the seller had been right, and although the stacks contained the usual re-pack compilation fluff and forgettable self-released man-with-guitar garbage, there was also nearly a full “history of classical” series, as well as a bunch of MC Mario and Big Shiny Tunes CDs, and of course 70s and 80s pop and rock.

All told, I pulled about 300 solid records from the pile, after doubling back to make sure I hadn’t missed anything on the first go-round. Most of these I’m going to be keeping for personal use in my one car that has a CD player, as well as for the library where I’ve recently installed a small component setup with a full-size CD deck ($25 at a secondhand shop), a Pioneer amp (left behind by my home’s previous owner) and a set of JBL speakers (giant octagonal units acquired for free from someone who had refurbished a local cinema).

As for that project I was alluding to earlier? The main reason I said yes to the madness of pickup up a thousand cheap CDs is because I’ve got some ideas for the next Dead Air Kickstarter campaign that required me to hunt down a big pile of 90s-era discs. This particular score delivered big time, and I’m now stocked enough to put that particular plan into action.

The lure of marketplace remains strong. I noticed just this past week that the same seller had listed 2,000 CDs for a very reasonable* $100 (*note: may not meet all definitions of “reasonable”). I absolutely do not need any more jewel cases in the house—which means it’s probably time to log out and spend some time with normal human beings who will do everything in their power to dissuade me from yet another impulse purchase.