Trading Records For Memories

A few weeks back my wife and I decided to sell a few doubles. Now, as some people may have noticed I don't have anything against collecting variants, but having two exact same copies of the same record is kind of pointless. Since my wife and I have a very similar taste in music, we had a few things that could go. Plus you get a little extra money for new records.
Friends had dibs, of course, and a good trading buddy of mine wanted one particular record to fill a hole in one of his collections. I was more than happy to help him out since we traded a few times before and he'd helped me out with some of my own collections and has always been very generous. My buddy asked me if I'd be interested in trading the record for a Bane shirt that was too small for him now. I'd been looking for this shirt for quite some time, so I was more than happy about the whole trade. He then asked if we could expand the trade a little bit and I said sure. So he went through my record list and found a few other things he wanted to fill some more gaps in other collections.
To make things a little easier, we agreed to finalize the trade via telephone. The call turned into a an hour and half long conversation about this trade, trading in general, records and current hardcore bands worth checking out. It's always so much fun trading with people, but nothing beats trading with this particular buddy of mine. Tom, if you happen to read this, you're the best! Hopefully we'll see each other again at some show soon!

Open Hearts And Clear Minds had been on my want list for quite some time, but this record doesn't pop up nearly as often as you'd think, regardless of the variant. Well, people know what's good apparently. I didn't care about the colour or sleeve, I just wanted to have a copy, any copy, so I was more than stoked that he had doubles of this 7". There are 300 copies on this cow skin coloured vinyl. I once read that this particular colour/pattern was done because the band has a strong vegetarian message. Pretty cool. 

A few weeks ago I got my first Title Fight record and I really liked that it. My buddy was looking to get rid of his Title Fight records because he never really got into them, so when he offered me a couple of 7"s, I said yeah. Plus, I'd wanted to see what all the hype about Touché Amoré was about for some time, so this split came at the right time. Both bands aren't going to become my new favourite bands, but the music is quite good and I wouldn't mind checking them out live. Title Fight / Touché Amoré split on solid pink out of 2000. 

I also got this copy of Title Fight's Flood Of '72, which contains the song of the same name and an acoustic version of the song on the b-side. 667 copies on black vinyl. 

As I said, my buddy has always been very generous when we traded before, and again, he threw in a bonus 7" this time. Max Rebo Kids was a band from Germany from the early 2000s. Definitely worth checking out. Now, I already had a copy of this, but that's not really the point here. I also got a nice little note explaining why he sent me this record in particular. Thanks again, man.