i mean, i don't want to mislabel my father's cd collection. it wasn't a vault of unreleased recordings by unknown artists, or full of special collection editions, or out of print copies, or anything like that. it was really a string of common label 90s reprints of 60s and 70s classics, even if some of it went unnoticed at the time. the closest thing it came to indie rock nerdery was some less popular eg records releases, stuff with holdsworth and bruford on it, and even that was all virgin records imprints. it was really nothing to fight over in terms of rarity or market value.
it was rather defined by his own interests as a very amateur drummer, so amateur that it only existed abstractly in his mind during any period i knew him, although there was a rumour that he played when he was younger. he often had a drum kit around, and i frequently took advantage of it; i never saw him actually play the instrument. but, the fact that he interpreted music through the drumming meant that his tastes were skewed to artists with strong drumming, and his collection was in fact centered around specific drummers he took a liking to: phil collins, bill bruford, terry bozio, keith moon and later on mike portnoy and mike mangini. as a guitarist and keyboardist, i found myself analyzing it by a different set of criteria, but that collection of drummers (as well as others) was certainly involved with the creation of some substantial music over that period, so there was a strong cross-section to draw from.
but, the truth is that it was mostly a collection of "common titles", and that was exactly what i was looking for. it was these physical copies of these classic recordings, as common stock as they may be, that i discovered on the wall in the past - records like animals, the lamb lies down on broadway, sgt peppers, the dark side of the moon, etc. platinum recordings. common titles; sure. exactly.
so, just to be clear - this library i had in front of me wasn't some plethora of obscurities. it was just the classics. and, that's my point.