So as some of you may know, in the past I've made collecting Dream Theater stuff a *slight* hobby of mine. It started pretty early on. I first discovered DT around 1997, and quickly picked up their entire discography. Then I found out about some singles with B sides, and, being the completist that I am, I started scouring Amazon for as many of those as I could find too. And as soon as I thought I had finally gotten it all, I learned about these mysterious fan club Christmas CDs that had been sent out. Then I started seeing other users on DTF posting pictures of their collections and noticed there was still more stuff that I didn't have (e.g., promo singles, Japanese versions, etc, etc). Not one to be outdone, I began digging deeper and deeper into eBay, learning how to win auctions through sniping programs, find overlooked stuff through misspellings ("Dream Theatre" is an ever popular one) or by searching titles and descriptions (Ive scored many a deal by finding rare stuff buried in eBay lot sales, such as a sealed WDADU longbox for $5.00). I began getting to know the other serious collectors on the scene, and before I knew it, my collection had expanded from a single mini CD tower to an entire bookshelf and then some.
But by around 2007, I was living on my own, working full time and living a pretty busy life, and I just didn't really have the time available that was necessary to continue building such a collection, rarities were becoming more and more expensive and sought after, and the overall cost of keeping up with all of that was starting to become a bit much, so my collecting habits more or less dwindled at that point and eventually stopped completely. Since then, about half of my collection has just been sitting around on display in my apartment, while the rest of it (mostly the posters and t-shirts) remain buried in the back of my closets. There have been plenty of times where I've tried to figure out what exactly I want to do with all this stuff... is it worth keeping? Should I just sell it all? Should I store it away somewhere? I've gone back and forth a bunch of times, but every time I start thinking about the possibility of selling it, I realize that I spent so much time and energy gathering all of this stuff into one place, that it would be pretty tough to part with it all - especially the true gems and rarities.
So lately I've decided that at the very least I should take a look through it all and re-familiarize myself with everything to see what I've actually got, what might be worth displaying, what might be sellable without too much pain, etc, etc. In the past, many people have jokingly told me I should open a Dream Theater museum, and while I laughed at the time, I started thinking about it and realized that in recent years Long Islanders have created the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, which Dream Theater were inducted into last year. They had no physical location, but they're in the process of opening a physical museum in my home town featuring inductees, so I've got a message in to them and I'm attempting to persuade them to open a temporary Dream Theater featured exhibit. I have no idea how that will turn out, but if it works I'd certainly be lending them some of my stuff.
But in the meantime, I thought it might be kind of fun to start a thread where every now and then I pick one item from my collection and do a little feature on it here. Pictures, background, any stories behind it, etc. (Note - one thing I probably won't be posting is how much I paid for stuff - and that's not out of any desire for privacy or anything, but because of the much more practical reason that, I was doing so much buying, selling and trading that, for most of this stuff, I just flat out don't remember). I figured it would be a fun way for me to revisit my own collection, while also being a way for some other fans to check out stuff that they otherwise may not have known even existed. Ideally I'll try to do at least one per week, but I guess the frequency will really depend mostly on whether or not there's actually any interest in this.
So anyway, I've decided to start with what is probably the most obvious choice, so here we go.
Edit - I thought it would be convenient to create an index linking directly to the posts about specific items:
ITEM #1 - MAJESTY DEMO TEST PRESSING CASSETTE TAPE (Scroll down)
ITEM #2 - IMAGES & WORDS CD (ALTERNATE VERSION)ITEM #3 - AWAKE - THE INTERACTIVE GUIDEITEM #4 - JORDAN RUDESS - A CHRISTMAS CAROL CDITEM #5 - MAJESTY DEMO SONG LYRICS PACKAGEITEM #6 - CHARLIE DOMINICI BACKSTAGE PASSITEM #7 - DOROTHY WALLACE - AMERICA/AUTOMO JOEITEM #1 - MAJESTY DEMO TEST PRESSING CASSETTE TAPEFront:
Back:
JP Autograph:
MP Autograph:
JM Autograph:
This is easily the rarest item in my collection. There is only one of them in existence, and this is it. In a sense, it's really the very first "professional" thing that Dream Theater recorded as a band. I picked up it a few years ago from Andrew Ross, who managed DT (well, Majesty) during the very earliest stages of their career. I had dealt with Andy before on other items, so I was pretty confident in its authenticity, but obviously with such a rare and unusual thing, one is never 100% certain. But then about 5 years ago DT did a pre-show meet and greet at a local record store, so I brought this tape to get it signed by Mike and the Johns, and I asked Mike about it directly and his was response was along the lines of "Yeah, this is definitely real. I listened to this exact tape over 20 years ago". I honestly don't remember exactly what I paid for it - the best of my recollection is that it was "A lot, but not the most I've ever spend on a single item". So there you have it. A genuine piece of Dream Theater history. Until next time...
Topic: A look inside the vaults of a slightly obsessed DT collector (Read 31407 times)