Showerthought: I found out my band's 1997 demo tape only had 11 copies made, and one just sold for $60

Cameron Thompson · 2026-09-30T00:35:05.290823+00:00

So last month I'm digging through a box in my mom's garage in Akron looking for old photos, and I find the original run of demo tapes my band Third Rail Sunday made back in 1997. I always figured we pressed like 50 or 100 of them because we handed them out at every show for a year. Then I count the actual cases and there are only 11, because our bass player Dave worked at a print shop and could only run them off when his boss wasn't watching the machine. Fast forward to last week and a guy on a tape trading group posts that he paid $60 for one of our tapes, still sealed, from a seller in Portland. I honestly laughed out loud because we recorded the whole thing in 4 hours in my uncle's basement on a Tascam 4 track with a blown tweeter on the left monitor. The drums sound like someone hitting cardboard boxes with sticks and Dave's bass is barely audible on track 3. But this guy wrote a whole paragraph about how the tape captures a certain feeling and he needed it for his collection. So now I'm wondering if there are other bands from that era sitting on tiny runs like ours that people are hunting for without anyone knowing. What's the smallest run of demos you all ever pressed or dubbed, and did any of them turn up somewhere weird later?

🐿️Pinecone Attack

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Showerthought: I found out my band's 1997 demo tape only had 11 copies made, and one just sold for $60 | Basement Band Demos - Pinecone Attack