Minidiscs are expensive!

[prand]

Hi all,

Given that minidiscs are (arguably) a redundant format, I thought I'd pick up a few on ebay for a few pence to play in my car which came with a minidisc player.

How wrong I was! ebay has minidiscs selling from £1.99 (plus £1.50 postage) for a Steps album (!) all the way to £50 for the more rare/desirable versions like Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson etc.

I guess there is the collector's value of them as they were produced in much smaller numbers, but I'm surprised that they are so expensive related to CDs.

So does anyone know if a source of cheap pre-recorded minidiscs I can tap into?

[davepoth]

Japan. HTH.

[Chris71]

By shear coincidence I've just bought a car with a minidisc player too. Forgotten what they even worth, I actually got as far as grabbing a few old cassettes to try in it before realising it wasn't a tape deck!

What format do they use? Is there a cheap way of burning your own Minidiscs based on MP3 conversion or something?

[ShadownINja]

You will need a minidisc recorder - could buy a portable jobbie, I suppose. But then you start getting into the whole format. Cheaper to bin the headunit and get one that allows you to use an SD card.

[Mattt]

NetMD is the PC to Minidisc conversion method.

I've still got my http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MZ-S1-Sports-MiniDisc-P... in a cupboard somewhere.

[Jobbo]

If you would like some blank MDs, I have loads, all still wrapped - I stocked up about the time I started ripping my CDs to my computer and ended up buying a Squeezebox and never using them. Drop me an e-mail if you're interested; I'm never going to use them but will want something for them.

[Furberger]

Good old minidisks. I remember busting round with high quality tunage in my ears whilst my friends were lugging round giant Diskmans and CD's or listening to terrible quality early MP3's. Still have my Denon DMD 1000. Ace!

[ShadownINja]

Furberger said:

Good old minidisks. I remember busting round with high quality tunage in my ears whilst my friends were lugging round giant Diskmans and CD's or listening to terrible quality early MP3's. Still have my Denon DMD 1000. Ace!

For a brief moment, they made more sense than DAT due to price, availability and ease of use.

[Mattt]

I bought mine as a halfway house to MP3 player. I didn't want to carry around hundreds of CDs, and a large Discman - but at the time the (reasonably priced) MP3 players were 128mb or so.

The NetMD gave me that capacity, but easily changeable on the move.

[Chris71]

ShadownINja said:

You will need a minidisc recorder - could buy a portable jobbie, I suppose. But then you start getting into the whole format. Cheaper to bin the headunit and get one that allows you to use an SD card.

I suspected that'd be the case.

I've got a USB input on my daily driver's stereo and that's fantastic. I can drive to Germany and back without even making a dent on its storage capacity with a large pen stick in there.

[ShadownINja]

Chris71 said:

I suspected that'd be the case.

I've got a USB input on my daily driver's stereo and that's fantastic. I can drive to Germany and back without even making a dent on its storage capacity with a large pen stick in there.

I bought a headunit from Halfords in the sales; £50 inc fitting IIRC. Accepts up to 2gb SD cards. I have 2 spare SD cards... bingo!

[anonymous-user]

Holy thread revival etc, but to build on the OP comment, have you seen the price of MDs now? I don't get it. I bought a Becker Mexico pro MD deck for a nostalgia add to my old car and one second later, minidiscs are priced at £10 to £80 on eBay! Doesn't mean they sell for that, but wow! Can tuck this thread up in bed again now. Unless someone knows who's paying a lot of money for an old format. It's not like they're vinyl or something!

[Skyedriver]

Polynesian said:

Holy thread revival etc, but to build on the OP comment, have you seen the price of MDs now? I don't get it. I bought a Becker Mexico pro MD deck for a nostalgia add to my old car and one second later, minidiscs are priced at £10 to £80 on eBay! Doesn't mean they sell for that, but wow! Can tuck this thread up in bed again now. Unless someone knows who's paying a lot of money for an old format. It's not like they're vinyl or something!

Happy to keep the thread awake, I bought a portable Sony Minidisk Recorder/Player about 10 years ago, used to record the Likes of Bob Harris and Paul Jones off BBC iPlayer and listen in the car. Still have a box load of the discs, the original player decided it would play but not record so I bought another but Bob isn't on the late programmes on BBC anymore.So everything redundant. Except for nostalgia. Shame as it's a great format that you can over write easily. Sometimes accidentally!

[Simes205]

I’ve got over 300md’s and a collection of players including a high end Sony mds940. I think I’ve probably got a 6 changer and car head units stashed away too!