Every time Mercury is in retrograde, I get the urge to look back in time. No, I am not on acid; I remembered today that I stupidly threw out the best portable cassette player created by human hands, the Sony Walkman WM-FX50.

This chunk of pure star-metal was so good I bought it twice — I dropped it one time too many and when it finally died, I bought a second one. It’s power was undefeatable until it met the immoveable force that was My Own Stupidity: I accidentally threw it out thinking it was it’s much lamer, used-once Mini Disc player.

I’m not sure why this mistake bothers me aside from it having been a mistake. I hadn’t actually used the Walkman in almost 30 years for obvious reasons: I no longer owned cassettes, having made the move first to digital media (shout-out to the O.G. Napster!), and then entirely to streaming. Streaming suits me fine because it gives me access to music that I hadn’t heard in over 40 years any time I want it, provides a method for discovery based on my known tastes, and should I be out of range of a WIFI or cellular connection (and plan ahead) I can download the media to my phone or supposedly, my watch for some weird esoteric and unexplained reason. Technology isn’t always bad because with wireless earbuds, I don’t get tangled in cords or have to worry about frayed connections, and the set I have sport noise cancelling tech as well to provide me with an unprecedented level of middle-finger to the outside world whenever I need to get away from it all.

And yet…Whether it’s a rite of passage into Old Age or just me, I find myself getting all nostalgic for aspects of my past that are now considered relics, specifically longing for the days of cassette tapes and before someone decides to @ me about how cassettes were the worst in terms of fidelity or whatever, I don’t care. Everything has it’s character, and the quality of a cassette is part of its character. Not being able to move between songs with accuracy is part of its character. Having to flip the cassette over is part of its character. Hell, even the faux-leather carrying cases we had to organize our collections and would take with us whenever we traveled is part of its character. I really, really want another cassette player to play cassettes.

So I committed myself. I’ve been really enjoying Castle Rat as of late, with their unique blend of throwback grunge-metal and wacky theatrics. I went to Bandcamp and ordered their “Into the Realm” album, and pre-ordered “The Bestiary”, both on cassette (although the fact that I can download digital “backups” is a cool perk that helped push me over the edge).

The problem is that I don’t have a cassette player right now, so I’m on the lookout for a good one. My initial searches turned up a whole lot of sub- $30USD players which look lesser than what I could print on my Bambu A1.

I have seen some that are retailing for over $150, which fall into that “nu-retro” category that is designed to appeal to people like me who want that Old Tyme Experience but with Nu Retro aesthetics, yet are being marketed by using images of hip, young people who would probably ask how they could connect a bare cassette to their AirPods or some dumb shit.

I remember my Sony wasn’t cheap, and I won’t lie and say that I’ve considered some of the offers I’ve found on the Internet from people who are selling working editions…often at $250 and up. I really can’t justify that kind of money on a technology of this age, and where most of the items being offered are listed as “for parts only”.

Part of the issue, of course, is that there isn’t a market for a worthwhile consumer cassette player in 2025. Companies who make them are flooding the market with passable devices that will play a cassette, but audiophiles will yell and scream about how crappy they are and will provide audio graphs to prove how poor they truly are, as if we couldn’t tell that the same form factor being sold under 12 different manufacturers was a piece of shit. Again, I’m not an audiophile; I’m someone looking for that authentic 1980’s/1990’s experience I once had back before I got spoiled by the lossless audio available to me today. Back then we heard the mechanics whirring away between songs, and the electric hiss that overlaid every single album didn’t bother us because we didn’t know any better. Why would I subject myself to something so inferior when the march of technology has made it so much cleaner to listen to? Because I can, I guess.