ELVIS KARAOKE PLUS

'Since I've moved to Quincy, I haven't accepted any eight-tracks,' he says. He almost reached 100,000 tapes in Peoria.

ELVIS KARAOKE PLUS

The collection fills his garage and a shed, plus his basement and three rooms inside the home. To haul all those tapesВ and players, he rented two 26-foot moving trucks and an 18-foot truck. So they decided to return there for good. He and his wife share a fondness for Quincy, where they'd lived for years. 97,342 tapes for saleД«ut those plans ended two years ago. Several years ago, he said he'd like to share the collection with the public more and create an eight-track museum in Peoria. He never sold them he was simply happy to give them a home. However, the value of the tapes was always secondary to Hiemenz. Those tapes often ended up in the trash, so their relative scarcity today makes them worth upwardВ of $400 each. His most valuable tapes were pop-hit compilations given away in the '60s and '70s by automobile manufacturers in some models equipped with eight-trackВ decks.

Most of those tapes are worth maybe a buck apiece. Genres include rock, country, polka, comedy, big band, bluegrass, rockabillly and gospel. The tapes range from huge names (Elvis Presley) to otherwise (The Six Fat Dutchmen). See photos: Handfuls of Hiemenz's eight-tracks on display in Peoria In 2014, a traveling Ripley's exhibit stopped at the Peoria Riverfront Museum, prompting a display of a small chunk of Hiemenz's acquisitions. When his inventory hit 60,000, the syndicated newspaper feature RipleyвЂ™s Believe It or Not declared Hiemenz the owner of the world's largest eight-track collection. He has spent a few thousand dollars on the collection, but the vast majority of it has been donated.

ThatВ prompted further giftings of tapes, sometimes even players. As he and his wife, Becky, would move to follow his jobs, local news media would find out about his quirky collection and run stories about Tracker Bob. Still, many people have kept them packed in boxes in attics, perhaps unwilling to throw away music - or their memories.Д«ut they're willing to give them a happy new home, as Hiemenz found out over and over again. The latter were not only more convenientВ and portable, but also avoided eight-tracks' annoying background hiss and clunky program transitions. By the late '70s, they'd begun to go out of fashion in favor of cassette tapes.

The survival of eight-tracks remains a curious phenomenon. Word got around his neighborhood that he was interested in the tapes, which soon started showing up at his front door, abandoned like unwanted musical orphans. His hobby started by accident in 1985.В A career newspaper publisher, Hiemenz was working in Fargo, N.D., when he picked up an old eight-track player and bought a few cheap tapes at a garage sale. How did the eight-track collecting hobby get started? Previously: Think those eight-tracks are worthless? Try priceless. He has almost 100,000 tapes and more than 700 players. If you're interested, bring a big moving truck. 'I'm willing to sell,' says Hiemenz, 74, who now lives in Quincy. Yet now he has become like so many of his benefactors. A few years back, while living in Peoria, he told me about his dream of creating an eight-track tape museum. Over time, he became known as 'Tracker Bob,' owner of what may be the world's largest collection of eight-tracks.

For nearly four decades, Bob Hiemenz has been the pied piper of eight-track tapes.В They've followed him wherever he goes.ДЄs he'd move from town to town, people - friends, neighbors, even strangers - would dump old, unwanted tapes on Hiemenz.

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