What should I do with a bag of old cassettes?

destroy them.
utterly.

I have some too. They’re probably trash but one was of a band my son was in so I hate to throw it out.

I doubt that there’s a market for used cassette tapes.

Rather than putting them into landfills, however, you could go online and find a recycling service that takes cassettes. The casing is polypropylene (#5 plastic), and the tape itself is polyethylene terephthalate (#1 plastic). There’s a limited recycling market for plastic in these forms, but there are some options and opportunities.

Are any of the songs worth keeping ?

As you may know, it is very easy to hook-up an old-school cassette player to your PC and digitally record the music into your iTunes (or whatever) library.

Then just put all of the tapes on the street on recycling day….

@janbb, the cassette with the recording of your son’s band sounds like it has sentimental value. I’d see if you can’t get that transferred to a CD or a digital file. Then you will always have it. I wish I’d done that with the video recordings of my children’s ballet performances and so on. The videos ended up with my ex who almost certainly threw them away.

Other cassettes are undoubtedly trash, unless they are a unique or rare recording that are not likely to be available elsewhere. Check ebay. People are trying to sell cassette tapes of old albums. No idea how successfully.

Yeah, I would record things to computer, and donate to Goodwill or other places that might find a use for them.

(I recently found an ancestral voice recording on a cassette and recorded it and learned some stuff my parents didn’t know about my grandparents.)

Send em to me. I have an old dual cassette boom box.

The word “old cassettes” reminds me of “Yesterday once more”.

Record over them. As a diary or psychic readings.

If they are prerecorded and are still in good shape I’d drop them off at GoodWill.
If they are personal recordings made by you or a family member keep them or get them digitized so you can save them.

If you have a tape that is total junk and you want to do a little science experiment…
Pull out the tape and make a pile of it on an old Corningware plate. Set it on fire with a match and let it burn completely. Save the ash and crush it with your finger or a spoon. Place a magnet under the plate and play around. with the dust.
.

^^^^^ LOL life around you MUST be quite an adventure.

^ I saved some in a baggie. You never know when you’ll need it.
(Everything has at least one other use – or can be weaponized.)

Have you tried microwaving a CD?
Procedure: Open the kitchen windows. Place the CD on the rim of an old coffee cup . Place in microwave. Set timer to 7 seconds. Push Start.
Stand back and watch the fireworks.
Note: This experiment is best performed at night.

Yikes! Would it damage the microwave?

@Patty_Melt No damage at all. But, if you let it go too long, you’ll stink up the micorwave, thus the open window recommendation.
Try it!

I think I will. I will wait for when my daughter can watch with me. She is into home science experiments.

I have some old cassettes of recordings of conversations I had with my children when they were toddlers. I didn’t want to lose these and have digitised them. I have also kept the original cassettes though there is really no point.

@flutherother Save the cassettes. How much space do they take up? Nothing. How much does it cost to keep? Nothing. Even if you don’t ever play them they show the technology at the time. If your kids are like mine they will find it fascinating.
I still have their Care Bear recorder and radio shows they made ~30 years ago. Maybe grandchildren will find it interesting.

I have no family to leave mine to. I’ll just donate to Goodwill.

Burn them.

^ Or that.

To clarify… Are they all prerecorded tapes of music that can be downloaded today? If yes, donate.
If no – they are of your childhood, your Mom’s voice, your dog barking, you laughing, etc. Keep those. They are precious.

They are all prerecorded music. All the greats: nickleback, LFO, Backstreet Boys.

Donate away! Some family without internet can use them.
You might try burning the tape from one just to see how neat the powder is.

And by the way…. ( In the voice of McGyver)... You can mix the resultant powder with aluminum powder made by filing a nearby piece of aluminum and make Thermite – a handy and useful product that everyone needs now and then to weld train tracks, destroy armored tanks, repair ballast tanks underwater, or just set off for fun on July 4th!.

It’s been years since I’ve welded train tracks!

Hey, you never know.
Here is a video if it Thermite Welding. You can skip the first 30 seconds. From 30 seconds to about 1 minute you can see it burning and melting steel.
I always have some at the ready.

Skip the first 2 minutes of this one. Another thermite video.

If you’re in a crafting mood, there’s this .

@tedibear Some of those are really clever. But I still think thermite is more fun. :-)

@tedibear Very clever ideas!