Opera music part of junk hauler's treasure trove

The junk hauler figured they had to be worth something, these 15,000 black discs that filled an entire room in a Silver Spring house.

"It's by far the largest collection in the seven years I've been cleaning out people's houses," Alan Cook told me as three of his employees lugged box after box out to a truck parked on the cul-de-sac.

They were 78-rpm discs mostly, and mostly opera. Locked in their dusty grooves were the voices of long-dead singers, from American soprano Bessie Abott (singing "Où va la jeune Hindone") to Italian tenor Alessandro Ziliani (singing "Donna Non Vidi Mai").

Alan has a deal with the people who hire him: His company, 1-800 Junk Refund, sells everything of value and splits the proceeds 50-50. But old classical records clog thrift shops and library book sales everywhere. When Alan put an ad on Craigslist he got only a few nibbles.

Then a record dealer from Frederick came to visit. He offered $4,000, then upped it to $6,000. Alan wondered if the records might be worth even more. He accepted the $6,000 offer, but wrote an agreement that if he was offered more than $10,000, the man would lose the collection -- but get $2,000.

And that's when a dealer from Long Island called and asked Alan to describe the records. "Money's not a problem," the man said.

His interest piqued, the dealer flew down a few days later, inspected the collection and offered $12,000.

Alan called the $6,000 man. "We got a better offer," he said, "but you just made 2,000 bucks."

It would take Alan and his crew -- Kennedy, Gilberto and Darryl (aka "Happy") -- another day to move all the records to a storage unit. Then there were the binders full of hand-lettered indexes to the collection, the opera books, the auction catalogues, the opera-related magazines and newspaper clippings.

"This guy loved opera," said the junk hauler.

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Why opera?