PORT TOWNSEND — The owner of an extensive collection of vinyl records, puzzles and compact discs that burned in a garage fire has come to terms with the loss he estimates at about $100,000.
Jim Dickie lost some 25,000 albums, 7,000 CDs and a number of vintage puzzles in a garage fire that erupted at 10:35 p.m. Saturday.
“I’ve lived through open heart surgery and cancer,” said Dickie, who moved to his home in the 600 block of Crutcher Road, about 5 miles southwest of Port Townsend, last month and had just finished storing the collection.
“You have to put all of this in perspective.”
Dickie, 72, has been a serious music collector since the early 1970s and had amassed about 32,000 records, CDs, books and puzzles.
“I will probably miss the collection of vintage jigsaw puzzles most of all, since I used to do them with my kids all the time,” Dickie said.
He isn’t quite sure what titles were lost in the fire, but he won’t have to start over entirely, because 8,000 of his favorite albums are safe in floor-to-ceiling racks in his bedroom.
East Jefferson Fire-Rescue firefighters found the 500-square-foot detached garage engulfed in flames when they arrived Saturday night.
A lack of fire hydrants in the area hampered their ability to knock down the blaze, so water tenders from neighboring fire districts were called in to supplement the supply of water on hand, said department spokesman Bill Beezley.
The fire was brought under control at about 11:10 p.m., he said.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation but was most probably electrical in nature, Beezley said.
Finding the exact cause will be difficult, he said, because many of the electrical components “are covered with melted plastic.”
The collection is mostly rock, folk and blues, Dickie said, adding that he has never been much of a jazz or classical music fan.
Dickie, who has lived in Bellevue and Blaine, is retired from a 40-year career in the masonry business.
He took business trips all over the region. He made his travels interesting by visiting record and thrift stores in search of valuable or rare titles.
“It’s pretty much dried up,” he said of the vinyl market.
“You can’t find anything in the Goodwill anymore, and record stores are too expensive.”
Many people sold their vinyl collections when CDs became dominant.
Dickie did the opposite and bought as much as he could at low prices.
During that time, he bought three new turntables, still in the box, for $25 each.
He is not a fan of downloading music, although he has burned a few of the records he bought on vinyl onto CDs “because the acid test for music is often how it sounds in the car.”
Dickie had planned to open a store in Concrete in Skagit County with a retail/coffee performance space on the ground floor and an apartment above.
There, he would sell and trade his records, many of which were duplicates purchased as store inventory.
A divorce got in the way of those plans, he said, adding that his ex-wife was never much of a music fan.
However, his two children, now in their 30s, appreciate music and will benefit from inheriting the collection, he said.
Collecting, he said, is all about knowing the value of a record and where it can be sold for a profit.
Several years ago, he bought soul and funk records in Montana for 25 cents each “because no one wanted them over there, drove them back to Seattle and sold them to a friend for $3.50 each.”
The Seattle friend would mark the records up to $50 and sell them to a Japanese dealer, who took them home and sold them for several hundred dollars, Dickie said.
Dickie’s first purchase was an Elvis Presley 45 rpm he bought when he was 13.
Most of his favorites were released in the 1970s.
“It was a great time to be alive,” he said of that era.
“I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it again.”
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
