I started building up my CD collection this year. I never really got rid of any CDs acquired earlier in life, but my purchases have picked up quite a bit - about 20 CDs in the past couple months.

One of the biggest reasons is the satisfaction of owning and holding a physical thing. Even though I’m not currently listening directly to the discs,[1] I do enjoy the tactical part of the experience. Scavenging at second-hand book and record stores can be pretty exciting - you never know what you might or what might catch your eye. We’ve found some gems in the local bins.

I’ve also had great luck on eBay. Since I’m primarily collecting for ownership, I can concede on the condition of the case, inserts, etc. as long as the disc is intact. That’s yielded some great deals.

I purchased a three-disc lot of Liquid Soul albums on eBay last week and they showed up today. I already owned one of the albums, but the price for the set of three was too good to pass up.

When I unpacked the discs, I noticed a notch in the spine of one of the cases.

What's the deal with my copy of Here's The Deal?

I inspected everything closely, and all the discs looked like they were in good shape. In fact, the cases were all much better than I was expecting… except for that notch.

Out of curiousity, I went back and looked at the original listing, and the photo clearly shows the notch.

Photo from auction listening

Since I’m primarily collecting for ownership, the notch didn’t really bother me, but I was still curious, so I started Googling.

Fortunately, someone on r/whatisthisthing asked the same question a few years ago, and the answer is: it’s a cut-out

Cut-outs are typically wholesaled to retailers as non-returnable items, meaning that the store cannot send them back to the distributor for a refund. The marking also serves to prevent the retailer from attempting to sell the discounted item at the original full price.
…
Except for the physical damage to the liner notes and/or outer case, the actual disc (LP or CD) is generally unharmed by the cut-out process, and sounds exactly the same as the originally sold recording.

Huh. Well… today I learned!

Back Side

Spine

Front

Don’t let my cut-out copy lead you to believe these albums aren’t great - they’re fantastic. Stream them on your platform of choice and hear for yourself.

  1. Sneak previous of the post I previously promised… I’m ripping CDs and loading them in to Jellyfin. ↩︎

  2. The other reason for owning the physical media… and now I have two copies 😁 ↩︎