Impulse Buy

A friend of mine (lets call him Wayne) is clearing out his CD collection at the moment due to space constraints. These things happen when you get a kid, and ANOTHER arcade cabinet.

He has boxes of CDs which he's bought over the years, but due to space constraints, and the fact that he has them all ripped to his PC, he's letting them go. It wouldn't all be to my taste, but there were a few titles which tempted me. Dunno why, since I have them already as downloads. An other I just thought, "might have be nice to have it but I'll probably not listen to it". One other that I wanted, as it's an excellent live CD. So there were 4 titles I wanted - kind of.

The one I wanted, didn't have the CD in the box. He doesn't know where it is but he'll have a look. This set me back and took the gloss off my impending spending. The "might be nice...probably not listen to it" didn't look so nice now. The other two, I figured, nah, I have them downloaded already. So I didn't take any.

That's the kind of shopper I guess I am. Almost impulsive, but then I think about it. Will I actually use it? Will what I have at the moment do the job? Is it just a waste of money that I could spend on something that I really want/need. And then I change my mind.

I'm the total opposite of Wayne. He is a marketer's dream. He has to have things. And stuff. Gimmicks, fads, special collector editions - he's the man.

For example, in one the boxes, there was a CD by a band I hadn't heard of. Didn't pay much attention to it. Went through a few more CDs and found the same one again. The only difference - the second one was a collectors edition with a second CD in it.

OK, maybe he really likes them - so much so that he's now selling them off - and just wanted to have a comprehensive collection of them. A bit like his Bob Dylan collection. I think it's safe to say that he has the complete back catalogue of Dylan on CD and is now selling it. I'd say there was about 40 different Dylan CDs in the different box. Including The Best Of...

Me, I would have just just bought The Best Of... but I guess that's the type of shopper I am.