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Audio System Donation

About the time I finish putting together my audio system I will be turning 68. Hope I have years of enjoyable listening but I won’t live forever. So I began wondering where to donate both the equipment and my eclectic CD collection in a ‘last will and testament’. No, family members is not an option. Considered a university common room but these days so many students go the rap and hip hop route. Most of my music would be wasted on this generation. Retirement communities, I suspect, would have the opposite issue – too vanilla – with way too few hard blues, fusion jazz and rock listeners at such a quiet place.


Thought I could open up a discussion here to receive reasonable suggestions. “Give it to me” is not a reasonable idea, and I will simply take down this post if people are that selfish or insensitive on this site.


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ebm
9,311 posts
 
Wow its great to be a crape hanger!!
stevea11757's avatar
stevea11757
126 posts
 
Interesting dilemma, I also approaching retirement and although I have thought about it from time to time, I suspect neither offspring would be terribly interested. They either stream from their phones to wireless systems they have, or just through the tv. One is in California the other in Amsterdam so shipping would be exorbitant. Had considered maybe the local library for my CD's (gave up records in College) but as far as hardware my guess is one of them will have to sell it off either piece meal or as a system. Would hope someone would want the smaller components, pre, dsd, cd player. 
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
One possibility at least for the media side is to catalogue it all on something like discogs.
This gives a rough market value to each album based on sales of said album.
That way at least your estate if it ever came to that, would have some idea on value.
Also helpful if you decide to sell all to a dealer as touted previously, you have a bit of ammunition.
But best scenario is you outlive the equipment!

Enjoy!
4krowme's avatar
4krowme
542 posts
 
  Similar dilemmas occur in many corners. My mother had trouble giving her silverware to anyone. I believe that the world has changed when we are unable to hand down what would have been beloved treasures in the past. 
 Once in a rare while, I find a young person that is really interested in real audio, and have at least once thrilled someone by giving a piece of equipment to them. Don't just trust that responsibility to someone else. 
 When I worked at a local college there were music students that had an actual interest in music.
dgarretson
2,586 posts
 
Join a local audio society/club.  They should be worthy pallbearers.
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