Pawn Stars

Everybody has a shopping story of how they found a steal of a deal. This is mine:

In high school, a typical day after school would find my friend Beaner, my brother and me making a trip to Bernie’s Delicatessen to get ice cream. We called it “Bern’s” because we shortened the name of everything back then. Afterwards, we would visit the pawnshops, located downtown, to see if they had any albums.

We sifted through piles of albums. Most were pretty scratched up and ninety-nine percent of them were albums no one cared for. We sorted through the albums with treasure in mind.

At that time, Beatle albums were no longer being released on the Capitol label having moved on to Apple Records. It was important to me to buy their albums on their original label. I was always on the lookout to score a piece no longer available in stores.

My diamond-in-the-rough story happened on the day I found a mint condition copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was a Capitol Record release. It even had the cardboard cutouts in the sleeve. I paid a whole quarter for that album. After making the purchase, we piled in the car and headed home to listen to my find in all its stereophonic glory.

Even at that age, I considered myself a collector. I have been collecting music ever since. It is amazing to think that the vast majority of my Beatle collection was purchased at pawnshops. Those albums are with me to this day. Their covers are safely behind frames and form a wall of artwork in my office.

“With a Little Help from My Friends“ is a song by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, from the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band issued worldwide in June 1967. The song was written for and sung by the Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr as the character “Billy Shears”. The song, paired with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and featuring “A Day in the Life” as its B-side, was reissued as a single in the U.S. in August 1978 (#71) and in the U.K. in September 1978 (#63). With a Little Help from My Friends was ranked No. 311 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 1 June 1967, it was an immediate commercial and critical success, spending 27 weeks at the top of the albums chart in the United Kingdom and 15 weeks at number one in the United States. Time magazine declared it “a historic departure in the progress of music” and the New Statesman praised its elevation of pop to the level of fine art.  It won four Grammy Awards in 1968, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honour.