He has spent a few thousand dollars on the collection, but the vast majority of it has been donated.

That 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.īut they're willing to give them a happy new home, as Hiemenz found out over and over again. The latter were not only more convenient 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. 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. They've followed him wherever he goes.Īs he'd move from town to town, people - friends, neighbors, even strangers - would dump old, unwanted tapes on Hiemenz.

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