R100 Crate Day at Bantu Records: Digging Deeper Than the Price Tag

At Bantu Records, digging has always been about more than finding records it's about the moment your fingers stop mid-flip because something about a cover catches your eye. It's about discovery, memory, and culture living in the grooves. R100 Crate Day is a reminder of that ethos: a day where curiosity matters more than budgets, and taste outweighs hype.

Once a month, a special crate lands in-store. Every record inside is priced at R100 no gimmicks, no tiers, no "good vs bad" sections. Just honest vinyl, waiting for the right hands.

What's in the Crate?

The R100 crate pulls from across the Bantu Records universe: soul that still aches, jazz that still swings, funk that still moves bodies, disco that refuses to die. Hip hop pressed when the culture was still writing its own rules. Broken beat from London's restless nights. House from basements and beach clubs. Leftfield oddities and forgotten gems. Records with history, character, and stories still inside them.

Some are sleepers. Some are well-loved. Some have been played to death and survived. Some have been waiting. Some might surprise you completely. That's the point.

This isn't a clearance bin it's a digging exercise. You have to flip, listen, imagine, and trust your instincts. The same way crate digging has always worked. The record that changes your month might be the one you almost skipped.

Why R100 Crate Day Matters

Vinyl has become expensive in the way that culture always does when enough people decide it matters again. When price becomes the barrier rather than the invitation, something breaks. R100 Crate Day is a repair job a monthly reset that brings things back to basics: accessibility without lowering standards, discovery without gatekeeping, community over consumption.

It invites first-time collectors to start their journey and seasoned diggers to reconnect with the joy of the hunt. It's for the student who just bought their first turntable. It's for the DJ tired of algorithms suggesting the same twenty records everyone else already owns. It's for anyone who remembers when digging meant possibility, not performance.

No pressure. No prestige. No Instagram flex. Just records.

The Bantu Records Way

Set inside our Parktown North space surrounded by plants, wood finishes, matte black walls, and the quiet hum of culture R100 Crate Day feels less like a sale and more like a ritual.

The space fills differently on these days. Teachers stand next to tattoo artists. Someone's grandmother flips through the same crate as someone's teenage nephew. A regular who's been coming for years starts talking to someone who walked in five minutes ago because they're both holding copies of the same obscure pressing.

You'll find people talking music, not flexing collections. DJs, designers, students, collectors all digging side by side. Records leaving the crate and finding new homes, new stories, scattering across Johannesburg into apartments, studios, backrooms, Sunday afternoon sessions, late-night mixes.

Some days, the best record you buy is the one you didn't know you were looking for.

Come Dig

R100 Crate Day happens in-store at Bantu Records. No online drops. No reservations. No countdowns or hype campaigns. First come, first dig.

Bring time, because rushing defeats the purpose. Bring curiosity, because certainty is boring. Bring your ears. Bring whatever you're looking for, even if you don't know what that is yet.

The digging the actual physical act of moving through possibility is part of the point.

Because at Bantu Records, the culture is always priceless even when the record is R100.