discogs marketplace?

oh, duh, sorry for clogging up this thread, and thanks!!

no worries. in fairness, none of us have really kept the thread up to date

Right after having to battle a seller for sending me a shitty copy of a VG+ album, the next seller accepts my payment, refunds me (including shipping) because he said the record wasn’t in as good shape as he remembered. Good to know there are some good ones out there.

one weird thing - have put my settings so that only people with over 95% positive feedback can order from me. and yet it still allows accounts with no purchasing history (essentially a 0% positive feedback score) to place orders. and hey surprise, surprise... they're a non-paying customer after more than a week

guess they'll be getting a 100% negative feedback score sometime in the next couple of days

yeah that's a thing. I guess it would put off new people from joining the site if they can't buy anything. so the feedback limit only applies to people that have feedback

got cold-messaged by someone today that they have a record that’s on my wishlist, offered it to me for cheaper than what it’s currently going for on the marketplace

yeah that's BS. they can enable 'make an offer' on a listing if they want to do that.

Sigh yet another “VG+” record with EX in the description that has significant scratches and a very good plus helping of surface noise.

But the fella has perfect feedback and a fair bit of it. I would feel like a picky weirdo leaving negative feedback! Maybe my expectations are too high.

he is probably very generous with returns/refunds if he has great feedback

significant scratches and surface noise do not an VG+ make

^^^

Use lighting, people

my fave is still when someone describes a record or cover or both as near mint and then goes on to describe everything wrong with it! people just really don't know what grading is. or a lot of people anyway. you can get it wrong sometimes if you are doing something in a rush - it has definitely happened to me - but you can't think that "like new" would include wear and tear to something?

What gets me is when something is missing a significant component but you have to find that in the notes because the remaining parts are what they are grading. I recently bought a box set and everything was in great shape. But there was no box. The cds had individual cases which were NM and that’s how they graded it. I should have paid more attention, but something isn’t NM if half of it is missing.

I hate those, plus they drive down the median price when someone sells like the single bonus 7" from a huge box. there's gotta be a better way to list incomplete items.

I do find it a bit irritating when you're looking at something rare and see "25 copies from $19.99" and go holy shit the price dropped and then you look and it's just one copy priced that low with a description like "DISC 2 ONLY, also I will not ship but rather will just throw like a frisbee in the direction of your house"

exactly

I remember the pre-Discogs and eBay days when you bought used records from stores/dealers in Goldmine or mailing list (paper) catalogues and the grading was very very conservative ‘cause these were people who made their living from selling records and reputation mattered. Now that anyone can do it I don’t buy records through the mail anymore (or at all). CDs are a little more forgiving of flaws.

Midnight Records (NYC) and Vinyl Ink (Silver Spring) were my go tos.

yeah but what if you have a really nice copy of a box set but one of the discs has a cigarette burn or something? sometimes you need to reunite long-lost siblings

xp

also, if the seller lists something in the notes, and you don't read the notes, that's on you

Definitely. And I think it's worth trying to sell these items, but the missing component should be factored into the grading.

"What is left of the item is in mint condition!"

Actually, while we're on...

I listed a bunch of CDs just now, mostly in the £7 pricing, from one of my "keep forever" boxes because ah cmon..

Anyway, as you know you state the condition and it suggests a price. A lot of times, it's suggesting £60 even though it sold for £8 maybe, last time.

So, I check out the sales history chart, and the line hovers around the 8 to 11 price, apart from one which is up at £57 or so. "Oh it must have been signed or something" but no, it's Mint, Sealed, and the comment has "Satisfaction Guaranteed" on it.

This was on at least five of the CDs I listed, the odd sale being anytime between "yesterday" and "two years ago"

What you reckon? Money laundering? Fakey saling to push prices up?

the hill I'll die on: the minute it is unsealed, it's no longer mint. I have many of the same pet peeves as those already mentioned here (the bait and switch of inexpensive-because-incomplete box sets chief among them) but just as bad is stuff listed M/M described like "from my personal collection, only played a few times." That's not mint, pal.

I’ll raise you one, there is no such thing as mint, it’s like absolute zero. Sealed should just be “sealed”

if you touch the record it isn't mint anymore!

i never grade anything unsealed as mint but there are certainly beautiful unplayed records that look like they did when they were new and they could be considered mint by me. but i would still grade them near mint.

i will often grade a near mint record as VG+ on discogs because i know people will flip over how clean it is. its good for business.

absolutely

there are certainly beautiful unplayed records that look like they did when they were new and they could be considered mint by me. but i would still grade them near mint.

yep this, or make ppl happy with a VG+

Mint=sealed
NM = would not mind the condition if bought new on-release at a record retailer

vg+ is a good grade, covers x"pretty good" to "way better than I was expecting"

Here is my grading comment: I get why jewel cases don't count, but I have also received a shocking number of CDs in the kind of state where I'd rather lose the $5 than ever touch the thing or have anything it contained in my house

yes! same here, most used CDs I order I have to replace the cases cuz they’re disgusting or broken

xps I usually assume vg+ means "endorsed by vegemitegrrl"

i put booklets/CDs into clean cases if they are wrecked. or even just dirty. everyone should. i never buy CDs online so i don't actually know how good/bad the used condition of discs are online.

for some reason i still kinda miss "excellent" as a grade on Ebay. i don't sell there anymore and sometimes in the comments on Discogs - which doesn't have "excellent" as an option - i will say that a record is "VERY clean and in excellent condition". excellent used to mean VG++ i guess. which isn't a grade but sorta should be?

discogs also weirdly doesn't have VG- as a grade. they have G+ which is so not VG- but that's what i end up using when i have a cover that is less than VG. which doesn't happen often. but sometimes i have something sought after that has clean vinyl and a crappy cover and which is perfectly sellable.

I have used VG++ as a sub for EX before, yep

I never noticed there was no VG- on Discogs!

yes! same here, most used CDs I order I have to replace the cases cuz they’re disgusting or broken

I mentioned this before, but ever since lockdown in 2020, I made a point to either clean jewel cases or replace them altogether. I was wiping them down with bits of paper towel soaked in rubbing alcohol just to be safe, and it was impossible to ignore how nasty some of those paper towel bits looked. I'll leave the details to your imagination, but I'm guessing in a few cases they were heavy smokers and what I was wiping off was smoke and nicotine residue.

A few vendors do a pretty good job of replacing jewel cases though - they tend to be bigger operations, but I make a point to go back to them as a result. (I haven't placed another order with Omega Music yet, but IIRC I bought a whole bunch of CD's that were actually given brand new jewel cases.)

I'd be fine with smoke/tar. Got one the other day where, in addition to it being shattered, I can only assume someone was doing lines off it, passed out, knocked over a full can of Fanta on there, then spent like three years in another state while mold grew over the whole thing. Liner looked fine, though, so ... NM! Literally just threw it away

(I don't get much joy from ordering CDs, but the whole reason I started buying vinyl decades ago was that it was incredibly cheap and featured lots of music that wasn't available in other formats -- and that's CDs now)

stuff being unclean is a hard pass for me, as is anything that is moldy or even rippled from past water damage. just do us all a favor and throw it in the trash

i mean, or clean it, if it's a jewel case or disc. but stains on a cardboard sleeve means it's essentially uncleanable. no thanks

this is akin to used book stores that sell what i can only describe as "bathroom books". water-stained paperbacks that they STILL try to get 5 bucks or more for. and i know its the same as the dirty CD thing which i also see in used record stores ALL the time. "Eh, its a paperback/CD, who cares. they're always dirty."

and don't get me started for the 400th time about dollar bins filled with unplayable trash with covers falling apart and covered in crap. either you are too lazy to walk to the dumpster or you really don't care about records at all. or both.

not just dollar bins with that stuff, it’s in the regular bins now.

books are even worse, I can’t be touching something for hours/days that has a stain or weird residue on it blecccch

yeah the regular bins are full of such junk in so many stores. there are stores throughout L.A. which i think take pride in never allowing shit condition records into the main stacks, and some which are at least 50% full of records in bad shape and they're selling them for $10. if a record is scratched or scuffed, it should be automatically a junker. those are the ones the stores need to sell for a quarter apiece as art pieces.

i still remember trying to find a copy of Gaucho for a friend and finding one at Record Parlour in Hollywood for $12 and it looked like a cat had gone at it. imagine being so craven that you'd sell a copy of Gaucho in that shape for that much.

I always try to list everything about one grade lower than I think it is or at LEAST “grade conservatively” because I’m always afraid my buyer is one of those super particular record geeks that’s not afraid to start some shit.

I don't want anything water damaged, period, even if it's clean water or if it's just a wrinkled booklet. But I've noticed there are plenty of people who will still buy CD's with wrinkled booklets or tray cards when it's clearly indicated as such, especially if it gets them a collectible, out-of-print CD for a much cheaper price, so I have no qualms with people selling them. They have to make that clear though - it pisses me off when someone marks a CD as just "Very Good" with no details and sends me something with a booklet or tray card that's all wrinkled from some liquid.

100% fine with trashed covers and VG+ vinyl here, gimme that discount

yea I got a really nice bargain at my local shop, it was a copy of Singles Going Steady with a completely mangled cover, really hard to tell what exactly happened to it. it was probably multiple things. the vinyl looked trashed as well but the guy insisted it actually played okay. he was right, somehow it did. when the covers are that bad I actually have some replacement outer sleeves where I just draw the cover on it myself. it's a fun little art project :)

my copy of Too Many Humans by No Trend is like that. cover is pretty trashed and no insert so I got it cheap but the vinyl is like VG++