About Us

Officially, “we” is Retro Marketing, formerly known as Retro Records. Unofficially, “we” is longtime record dealer, collector and sometime author Charlie Essmeier.
Charlie Essmeier

We have been selling records since 1978; our first ad appeared in issue #19 of Goldmine under the business name of Used Grooves. We had a record store in Houston, Texas for a while but eventually moved into doing record shows and mail order full time. In 1990, we moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and we ceased full time record sales in 1994, though we have been selling intermittently at record shows and on eBay over the years.

In 2013, Charlie decided to get back into the record business on a bigger scale and created Rarerecords.net.

Charlie has been a longtime occasional contributor to Goldmine and also contributed quite of bit of information to the 1994-1995 edition of Goldmine’s Price Guide to Collectible Record Albums. In 1996, Charlie published Rockin’ Gold: The World’s Most Valuable Records, a title which is now out of print.

price_guide

Charlie is a longtime record collector, and his interests are varied, but these days he’s spending a lot of time listening to both Bossa Nova and Porcupine Tree, along with a smattering of pretty much everything in between. He also actively collects rarities by Lesley Gore and Julie London, and particularly enjoys tracking down vintage Japanese LPs pressed on red Everclean vinyl.

RareRecords.net was created to offer a variety of interesting rare records to the public, and to offer an outlet to those who are interested in buying records online but don’t want to do business on eBay. We hope to offer great products and terrific service.