Vintage cassettes are flying off the shelf at La Rola Records in Tijuana
Shoptalk buzzing throughout San Diego County record shops and swap meets is that vintage cassette tapes sell fast in 2021, particularly ’80s rock music cassettes by Mötley Crüe, Whitesnake, Poison, Ratt, REO Speedwagon, Journey, and Twisted Sister.
Let s rewind a little bit so you can see how cassette tapes disappeared as their sales plummeted and auto-reversed back into online shopping carts during the pandemic.
Cassettes were 86ed from local retail stores in the 2000s because CDs were more affordable to manufacture, and the format produced a better sound quality. The invention of the MP3 player followed by the iPod in 2001 further edged out the cassette from the music sales’ market share pie. Per
Vinyl fair dealers. “Tijuana is considered the rock capital of Mexico.
On March 26-27, an estimated 20 San Diegans rendezvoused with about 3000 other record collectors and dealers at the Pasaje Rodríguez on Avenida Revolución in Tijuana for the Fifth Tijuana Vinyl Fair.
“I found an extremely rare City of the Angels single by Los Walker de Tijuana.”
“[I found] an extremely rare City of the Angels single by Los Walker de Tijuana,” said Lucio Soto. “Currently, I exclusively look for Tijuana oldies bands from the 60s and 70s.”
Soto’s been stockpiling records at his Escondido home and storage lockers for the past 35 years.