I believe Amazon offers both CD-on-demand and sale of a physical stock of CDs. I think Dick is talking about an actual inventory sale for $15.98. As I said above, musicians can set up their own "store" on Amazon to sell either mp3 downloads (individual tracks or full albums) or CD-on-demand albums, for which Amazon burns and prints a CD and mails it to you. No inventory involved, theoretically endlessly available. What I don't know about the CD-on-demand is what format and quality is used for the created CD.

Not to sound like an advertisement, here's how it worked for me:

I used this "createspace" self-publishing feature at Amazon to put up a collection of originals on our IN CONNECTICUT album, leaving off the cover songs and the full album, which is available on CDBaby. This way I didn't have to get the download licenses for those other songs. When you look at my ShoreGrass on Amazon Page, you see this originals-only album along with the ones put there by CDBaby (for which I paid all the download licenses).

What I'm suggesting is that maybe someone like Dick at Camsco can use one copy of a rare trad recording to put it up on Amazon and then resell on demand. He can use the CD-on-demand feature himself to then provide the CD to his customer.