A Backlog of Music and Movie Memorabilia from Bill's Records Is Available To Purchase

When Bill Wisener, owner of storied music store Bill’s Records, died in 2020, the community mourned the loss of a local icon and of a beloved institution. The owners of Josey Records bought what was left of Bill’s a few months after Wisener’s death, becoming stewards of the store’s legacy and the massive backlog of music and movie memorabilia left behind.

That memorabilia is now for sale, and it includes some gems that are valuable to both the Dallas music scene and music history as a whole.

“We created billsrecordvault a little over a year ago to showcase all of his amazing inventory and to have a dedicated IG account for Bills Records," Josey Records co-founder Waric Cameron says. "We post a ton of merchandise which is linked to our Ebay [...] where people from all over the world can and do purchase items that are listed. [...] We also post a lot of personal mementos from his 30-plus years in business.”

“Without Bill’s foresight to not throw anything music-related away, our ability to reflect on the history of Dallas music and specifically the punk scene in the '80s would be based solely on the memories of those that experienced it,” reads the caption on an Instagram listing for a vintage Circle Jerks poster. “Luckily, Bill saw the value in holding onto these cultural items for future generations to appreciate.”

Vintage posters going back decades dominate the inventory, with artists like The Beatles, Janet Jackson and Morrissey represented. Items such as an authentic 1977 poster for Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and a Mudhoney promo poster from 1989 are going for hundreds of dollars.

Unique concert memorabilia is up for grabs as well. Tickets for Dallas concerts such as Black Flag and The Butthole Surfers in 1986 and KISS in 1990 are going for between $15 and $40. They sold for less than $10 at the time, so take this as a sign to save your ticket stubs.

If you’re looking to score some new clothes, the archive has  plenty of T-shirts as well. These are probably not T-shirts you’ll want to wear, but you may want to have them framed. Wearable merch for The Roots, Tripping Daisy and Lollapalooza 1994 cost between $150 and $400. On the modest end of the pricing scale, a shirt from 1994 commemorating the third birthday of 94.5 The Edge is available for $50.

There are plenty of tchotchkes representing non-music fandoms as well. For the reasonable price of $125, you can own a promo for ET: The Extraterrestrial in which the alien lead is cheesing alongside Michael Jackson. If that’s a little too '80s for you, there are DVD sets for franchises Toy Story and The Hunger Games, a Superman sticker book from 1977, an original Rocky Horror Picture Show movie poster and buttons from the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and more. (Because we all have a Richard Nixon fan in our lives we’re on the hook to buy presents for every year.)

And for what it’s worth, a pair of vintage pop-up binoculars from 1998 emblazoned with the Dallas Observer’s website and that year’s “Best of Dallas” logo is also available to anyone with $25 to burn. It’s described as a “must-have for any Dallas Observer” fan, which means we’ll probably have to buy it ourselves.

More listings from the Bill’s Records Vault can be found on its Instagram and eBay pages.