Resurrected Records opens in Drinkle Mall with all used records

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Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today, the StarPhoenix talks to Nicholas Kucey who opened Resurrected Records downtown in the Drinkle Mall in December.

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Kucey bought a turntable about five years ago, which ignited a passion for records. He has travelled all over Western Canada tracking rare records down and decided a space to buy and sell records would be ideal. His store now features over 5,000 records of all varieties.

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Kucey shares a space in Drinkle Mall with Lindsay Scarrow, who opened Replacing You, selling a wide variety of clothing. Watch for a feature on Replacing You in next week’s New Faces, New Places in the StarPhoenix.

Q: What is Resurrected Records?

A: We’re Saskatoon’s only 100 per cent second-hand vinyl record store. Everybody else orders in new. We’re like a used bookstore. We also sell all forms of playable media. So VHS tapes, cassettes, CDs, 8-track, anything that played music back in the day, we have it. Laser disks, DVDs, we’ve got it all. And we sell turntables and cassette decks.

Q: What attracted you to records in the first place?

A: I’ve always been a collector of shoes and other sports memorabilia, and owning something physical is the closest thing you can get to the artist. I started off with Guns N’ Roses records. I’m a big fan of theirs and I wanted to have all their albums on vinyl. That was my first album collection on LP.

I probably just started listening to records about five years ago. My parents grew up in the CD era. We had CDs all around the house. But I found a turntable at Value Village and that’s where it all started. I ended up buying a few albums and decided it was really cool. Then there was researching and understanding the hobby a bit more. Eventually I started buying some more in-demand titles. I started traveling around Canada to different vinyl record fairs in Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Moose Jaw, you name it I’ve probably been there.

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Q: Why did you open Resurrected Records?

A: The last couple of years I’ve been buying big collections to try and get one or two good albums out of them. The problem is when you’re buying these big lots, you get 20 to 30 albums you already have. I can’t keep 10 copies of Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell, so I have to sell them off. So to kind of build my own collection and try to make a business out of it, I started Resurrected Records.

Q: Do you buy records from customers as well?

A: We buy, sell and trade. We do it all.

Q: How many and what kinds of records do you have?

A: We probably have about 5,000 albums in the store right now. We have all genres to suit the needs of everybody. That’s kind of the goal. Everything from jazz to rap to heavy metal. We have them all. We even have spoken records like Tommy Douglas. He had a box set back in the day, just him speaking.

Q: What makes Resurrected Records stand out?

A: We are 100 per cent used. We do not import new vinyl. We’re fully second hand. We carry titles that would be more in the collectible scene because of age. That’s what we’re trying to do compared to everybody else. We’re trying to bring in the big names, the ones that people look at and go, oh damn, I can’t believe this is here. That’s kind of our goal at the moment. If people bring in newer records or second hand then yes we carry them. But we don’t order directly from Amazon or Warner Brothers. If it’s a new record per se and another store has it and we have the same one, it’ll be cheaper at ours because we have the used alternative compared to a new one, even though they are in basically the same condition.

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Q: Do you have some rare records?

A: In demand right now people want the original copy of Metallica, Master of Puppets. We have one. We have a lot of rare bootlegs from back in the Soviet Union when they couldn’t import music from the United States. They made it there by themselves illegally. One is called Hitler’s Inferno. It’s basically just Hitler doing his speeches in Germany and how people in Canada were able to hear, because there weren’t iPhones back then or YouTube. Records were the only source of media that they could hear what was going on. Cool stuff like that. We have bands like Type O Negative, Rancid. That’s kind of the more high-end stuff we carry.

Q: Do you have a large Beatles collection?

A: We have about 100 plus Beatles records in the store. Some honourable mentions in that one, we have an original, their second album called With the Beatles, but it’s the UK pressing that goes for about $150 on the Parlophone label. That’s a very sought after one by Beatles collectors.

Another one would be the original Canada and US White Albums. The cool thing about the original ones is that they’re all numbered on the bottom right. We’ve got a couple of those in the other day. And I have bootleg Beatles albums.

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Q: Do you have discount records?

A:  We probably have over 3,000 records priced at $5 or less. It’s like Value Village on steroids, but there’s no crap. Everything on the bottom shelf is $5. With used records, they come in all kinds of different conditions. If there’s a little imperfection here or there we don’t throw it out, we just sell it at a very reduced rate. It’ll be a $20 record but we’re going to sell it for $5 because there’s a small scratch.

Q: What is the atmosphere like at Resurrected Records?

A: We play records all day. It’s clean cut. It’s a one-on-one experience when you walk through our door. All the shelves are custom made. All the wall units came from guys in Saskatoon. You can’t just go to Ikea and buy stuff for a record store. Everything is fabricated by hand.

Q: You share your Drinkle Mall space with another business?

A: Replacing You is operated by Lindsay Scarrow in the unit next to me. We have a small dividing wall with two doors. It’s connected. That’s how we get a good deal on rent. There are two separate entrances. But you can also go to each store by walking through the dividing wall. I met Lindsay through kind of similar hobbies. She’s into clothing and t-shirts and sells second hand clothes and I’m into records. We go to trade fairs and I’d always see her there and I asked if she was interested in opening a store to save money.

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Q: What do you love most about owning Resurrected Records?

A: It’s the freedom to do what I love to do. A lot of people go to school and they’re forced in a direction that they don’t want to take. I go to work and make my own hours and talk records and music with everybody every day. It’s awesome. I wouldn’t pass it up for anything really.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Resurrected Records

Owner: Nicholas Kucey
Address: 115 – 3rd Avenue South (Drinkle Mall)
Hours: Tuesday to Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Closed Mondays.
Phone: 306-250-1327
Email: [email protected]
Website: Under construction
Check: Facebook, Instagram, Discogs

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