Re: How does one acquire a GG collection w/o going broke?

[Mary Jo Watts <mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu>]

Interesting problem, this GG collection business.

Well, one really cheap way to start on CDs if you're living in the north
of the US is save your money, hop across the border to Canada, buy a GG
edition box set (which I've never seen stocked in the US) in Canadian
dollars (great exchange rate right now) and be sure to show your receipt
at the duty free station so you can get the taxes back. (Taxes have to
be more than I think 3$ for this scheme to work.) That's even cheaper
than buying the discs second hand if you don't count the actual cost of
travel. ;-). 

Now for what I really did.  I started my collection of GG recordings the
old fashioned way-- on glorious LP. No 20 bit sound but LOTS of humming.
For about 75$ you can get a basic new turntable.  I never paid more than
8$ for any boxed set (including Glenn Gould plays Bach)-- the average
cost for me was about 2-3$ an LP.  Up to 7 LPs for the price of 1 CD!
For that you even get the cover art which ranges from absurd (the
Schoenberg LPs) to cool (The Jubilee LP and the laughing GG on the blue
washed Italian Concerto LP).  Much more colorful anyhow than the generic
Sony packaging and you usually can get the first releases with original
liner notes. This method was cheap enough for me that I could also
afford to collect the reissues for the cover art. You can also find some
GG cassette tapes around-- Borders once had much of GG's Bach collection
on cassette but they were more expensive than the LPs.

I got most of my LP collection at The Princeton Record Exchange of
Princeton, New Jersey:  http://nerc2.nerc.com/~cdlp/welcome.html

As for the videos-- when they were new releases, they were about 19.95$
and then hiked up to 29.95$ (How many copies of "On the 20th Century"
does Sony expect to sell at a retail of 29.95?  8 or 9?) In the NYC area
you can rent them from Tower Classical on B'way.  If you're in a remote
part of the country and don't want to buy the videos I think you can
rent (or buy) them from Facets: http://www.facets.org/  (You join their
club for 35$ and then the rental is 10$ and you get three days to view
the video.)  They do ship internationally but you have to pay the USPS
going rate to your country and I'm not sure which video formats they
offer. I use Facets all the time.

Come my birthday in June, I hope to get _Ecstasy_ and finish off the
video collection.  

Best of luck, Colleen!

-Mary Jo