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My main intent with collecting vinyl is to acquire albums I have on CD that were created before 1990, the year when the transition to CD started to take hold.

But occasionally I’ll run across a bargain that’s too hard to pass up. Wall of Sound, a record store in my neighborhood, moved up the street, so the store held a garage sale. I came away with a bunch of stuff for $0.50, as well as a number of grabs from a box of freebies. Jive Time Records has bins full of 99-cent deals, and Everyday Music has understock priced under $3.

As a result, I’ve ended up with albums I would never have purchased otherwise, and there’s nothing like discovering something likable that’s was gotten for cheap.

Here are the acquisitions, the good with the bad:

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Now that I’ve fallen into the black hole of vinyl collecting, I rarely ever visit the CD sections of the local music shop. My penny-pinching tendencies have pretty much made Amazon my default for the now-rare instance when I want to buy CDs. (Or, as I like to call them, “high quality audio backups.”)

I’ve noticed something happening on Amazon — prices for some major label titles on CD are lower than their digital counterparts.

A few weeks ago, I decided to get Purple Rain by Prince and the Revolution. My first instinct was to use part of my eMusic quota to download it, but I did a price comparison between eMusic and Amazon and discovered the most economical way to buy the album was to order it on CD. On Amazon MP3, the album cost $9.49. On eMusic, it was $6.49. But to order a CD on Amazon: $4.99.

I ended up buying it at Everyday Music for $5.99. I didn’t mind paying the convenience fee.

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