Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Karen Thompson of Roanoke said people who helped her organize her house moved crates of her daughter's albums into a pile of items for a yard sale. The yard sale took place May 17. The albums, worth about $150, sold for $50.

Photo courtesy of Erin Gengo

Erin Gengo intended to bring the albums home to Seattle one day. But "in the end, they're just records, and nothing to get super upset over."

Two plastic milk crates of classic rock and hip alternative vinyl record albums were a sweet find for a young Roanoke couple -- and a bargain, at $50.

For a one-time Roanoker living in Seattle, the deal was a personal disaster.

Erin Gengo never meant to sell those albums. Her mother, Karen Thompson, didn't mean to sell them, either.

But there they went, in the hubbub of a springtime yard sale. By the time Thompson called her daughter to ask if they were hers, it was too late. While the new owners enjoy their newfound tunes spinning at 33 ¹₃ rpm, Gengo is left with frustration.

"Everywhere I go, I hear a song" from one of about 100 records, "and I go, 'Ack! I lost that! I had it!' " Gengo said.

It's a common frustration everywhere for grown-up children who've gone out on their own but left stuff with their parents. Sure, it's valuable to you -- but to your parents? They might fetch a little money in a yard sale and clear out some space in that not-quite-empty nest.

Thompson, though, said she didn't mean to sell the records. Instead, the two milk crates full of vinyl accidentally wound up with yard sale items in the basement, moved there by someone who was helping her prepare her house for sale. Still, she acknowledges mistakes made, and a festering regret.

"I have just been beside myself with guilt ever since," Thompson said.

Gengo estimates that the albums are worth $150. Thompson said she sold them for $50. Both of them hope that the couple that bought them are willing to bring them back.

Thompson said she would pay the couple $100 for the collection -- a 100 percent profit for the new owners. Gengo said she's got a lot of great memories invested in the collection.

"They're not really worth anything to anybody, except to me," said Gengo, who lives with her fiance in Seattle and is studying geography at the University of Washington. "I just spent a lot of Sundays listening to records.

"I think that whoever took these records, if they've seen the fliers or read the article, they know what to do. ... I'd like to have them back."

Not yours, and not mine

Thompson describes the days leading up to that fateful yard sale as "an ongoing comedy of errors, and people not thinking clearly because we were so busy."

Here's how it happened.

When Thompson decided to put her home at 2042 Memorial Ave. for sale, she hired "stagers," professionals whose job is to get a house looking sharp for potential buyers.

What she didn't know is that the stagers went through the closet where Gengo had stored her albums, trying to create open space. They moved the crates to an area in the basement marked "yard sale."

Gengo had been in Roanoke during her spring break in April and had cleaned out that closet, but she was unable to take the records back.

"She had said to me, 'I don't want anything to happen to the albums,' " Thompson said.

But there they were, in the basement, soon to be carried onto the yard for sale on May 17.

Only one of the crates was outside when a young couple with a baby in a stroller walked up and immediately noticed the crate full of LPs. They began to ask Thompson's son, Adam Thompson, about a price, and if there were any more records. He went to get the second crate, and they struck the deal. But the couple had to walk back home so the man could get his vehicle and come back for the records.

In the meantime, mother and son began to discuss the records. Adam mentioned that one of them was Van Morrison's "Saint Dominic's Preview."

"I said, 'Wait a minute -- these aren't mine,' " Karen Thompson said. "Adam said that they weren't his."

She went to the phone and left a message for her daughter. Soon, though, the man came back, with $50 in $2 bills, she said.

"They must've had to go into their stash," she said. "They apparently knew what they were getting."

What they got included Michael Jackson's "Thriller," Bob Dylan's "Blonde On Blonde," Johnny Cash's "At Folsom Prison," The Smiths' "Meat Is Murder," Fugazi's "Steady Diet of Nothing" and Prince's soundtrack to the movie "Purple Rain."

"They were bought and sold before I heard back from my daughter to confirm that they were hers," Thompson said.

And that was the problem, Gengo said.

"What she did though was she didn't wait for me to call her back," Gengo said. "She sold the records first, then she called me to tell me she'd sold them. By then, it was too late to do anything" except complain.

And she did, by both accounts.

"I've been kicking myself ever since," Thompson said. Even the stagers called Thompson, apologetic.

Attempted recovery

Gengo made up some fliers, e-mailed them back home and had them posted at Plan 9 Music, Roanoke Natural Foods Co-Op, Mojo Cafe and other businesses close to her old home.

Thompson made a couple of big posters and tacked them up on telephone poles near the house, figuring that the records' new owners lived nearby. Both were complete with contact information and a plea to have the music back.

But they haven't heard a word in response.

Plan 9 assistant manager Jamie Booker said she left the flier up for 10 days, but had to take it down as more fliers came in and no one who saw the flier had any information about the LPs.

Then again, after a haul like that, who needs to visit a record store?

Gengo, 26, had traveled for years before settling into college and a relationship in Seattle. She hadn't been able to travel with her records, but she felt like she was going to eventually have them in her new hometown.

"This was going to be the place," she said. "I was going to bring my records here somehow, because I'm pretty settled down now."

Finally, her temper over the loss has cooled.

"The records are worth something to me and I'd like to get them back," she said. "But in the end they're just records, and nothing to get super upset over."