“We want to be at a price point that people could just be like, ‘Wow, what a deal!’” says Curry, who also owns Your Media Exchange stores in Toledo and Ann Arbor. “This is a great way for them to be able to find entertainment at a crazy cheap price.” | Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
Some of Broc Curry’s first customers at Diggers, his sprawling used-media store in the basement of Kerrytown Market & Shops, were Community High students. He later learned that they’d skipped class to get first pick of the music, movies, and books up for grabs at bargain-basement prices.
Their haste and truancy was unnecessary, Curry says: Diggers carries more than 120,000 items and restocks thousands more daily. All are offered at a flat price, which started at $1.25 but after a month settled at $1.50.
“We want to be at a price point that people could just be like, ‘Wow, what a deal!’” says Curry, who also owns Your Media Exchange stores in Toledo and Ann Arbor. “This is a great way for them to be able to find entertainment at a crazy cheap price.”
The 4,000-square-foot space beneath fiber-arts shop Spun was most recently home to Human Electric Hybrids and Urban Rider Cargo Bikes, now based a few blocks west at 320 Miller (Jan. 2023 Marketplace Changes, Human Electric Hybrids Grows).
Curry knew from an early age that he wanted to be in the music business. The Bowling Green native and longtime Toledoan started working in a record shop at age twelve and soon was booking concerts locally. At fourteen, “I’d go work the door … for Kid Rock at Club 21 and go to school the next morning and do it all over again” the next night.
Eschewing college, he opened the first of several record stores at twenty-two. He once owned five bars but is now down to one—Frankie’s in east Toledo—as he focuses on Your Media Exchange and Diggers, the streamlined offshoot he hopes to scale.
YMX offers new and used media, video games, and equipment (he sells about twenty cassette Walkmans each month in Ann Arbor) and will buy or trade as well. Scouring stores and private collections coast-to-coast, Curry has amassed enough inventory to fill a 10,000-square-foot warehouse.
But he’s found that “paying people to price things, the staff costs, and the sorting costs really is where we run into a lot of expense.” So at Diggers, the surplus and duplicates are organized only by media type and—roughly—by genre.
“Now I just unpack a box, make sure the discs are in there, and put them on the floor, you know? So it’s nice and easy.”
How does he explain the continuing appeal of physical media in a digital era? “Some people are totally fine with streaming or whatever it is,” he says, “but there’s a certain person that just really enjoys collecting it—the thrill of the hunt.” He welcomes the resellers who spend hours digging through titles and leave with boxes full of finds (that’s the source of the store name).
“We do purposely make sure that we’re not just putting 100 percent common titles in the collection,” Curry says. “That’s no fun. We want to make sure that people are able to walk in and find unique items that they’re not going to find elsewhere.”
Diggers, 410 N. Fourth Ave. (Kerrytown Market & Shops). (734) 786–5262. Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–7 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
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