I contributed to the bankruptcy of a regional record store chain in the 90s

Around 1996 or so a regional record store chain, The Wherehouse decided to get into the used CD market. Of course to sell used CDs you have to buy them first. So they created a promotion to kick start their inventory.

Trade in any (except promos) 5 used CDs and get one new CD for free. To test, I went to my local independent record store, and bought 5 CDs from the dollar bin. Thanks to a buy 3 get the 4th free promo, I spent $4 to get 5 used CDs to trade in for a brand new CD at The Wherehouse. Of course the problem here was that I was leaving money on the table buying 5, since the promo was buy 3 get the 4th free. So I needed to buy in multiples of 4. So the next day I bought 28 $1 CDs for $21, and traded them in for 6 brand new CDs (with one $1 CD left over).

During this second visit, the cashier at The Wherehouse (who clearly loved his employer) informed me that if I wanted to return an unopened CD originally purchased there and I didn’t have my receipt? They would refund cash.

So I went back to the independent record store and bought every $1 CD they had that wasn’t punched/stamped as a promo. Probably around 200 that trip, spent around $150, and brought them over to The Warehouse, traded them in for 40 new CDs (making sure to find only full priced titles), and then immediately returned them for around $700 in cash.

I repeated this probably 10 times until the owner of the independent record store told me he wasn’t going to sell me any more $1 in bulk.

It was good while it lasted.