discogs marketplace?

is this usually OK to use? looks to have a much better selection than ebay, or does anyone know of any good alternatives?

(sorry if this has been asked before, couldn't find anything when I searched?)

discogs imho is in the same league as Gemm and Musicstack--generally a slightly more esoteric selection, but the pitfalls and price-gouging remain the same. (i.e. it's a number of individual sellers and so it's dicey no matter what. I guess that's why there's a feedback system? I've never used discogs.)

i assume you're looking for vinyl? discogs is usually fine, but i wouldn't buy anything labeled below nm-, unless you've scanned the seller's profile and s/he seems like a saint

yeah just vinyl and CDs that you can no longer get elsewhere really, thanks for the warning!

i started using it a few months ago and have found it to be pretty great in general though i would agree about not buying below mint. out of about 30 purchases i've only had to deal with one person who ripped me off. i now look on discogs before ebay if looking for a record.

I was able to score a highly OOP release from overseas, and as long as you have PayPal, you're quick, and you're picky about feedback ratings, you should be fine. (same goes with Gemm and the like.)

via discogs that is. Granted, I've only bought one thing from Discogs marketplace, but it was a simple and quick transaction, especially for overseas.

+1 to discogs: they don't have Gemm's crappy UI (Gemm usually contains these impossibly long forms with checkboxes and radio selection buttons all obfuscated while you're trying to buy or sell through them.)

i buy and sell on discogs. have only had 1 bad experience with a guy who tried to charge me 10 dollars to ship a cd single from Canada.

i've shopped quite a bit on Discogs, 30+ purchases or so, and I have been satisfied in all but one. And in that instance I filed a claim through PayPal and got my money back. As long as you use PayPal you should be fine and protected, prices are high though and I don't buy anything under NM-, like everyone else here has said.

I've used it once so far without problem. There are some rare and/or hard to get things on there, but the prices seem a little over the odds a lot of the time.

lol last post on thread: http://www.discogs.com/sell/list?seller=musicberlin

Um, someone want to try and explain this to me? Also WRT his feedback rating/comments?

hahaha. so weird. just 5 seconds ago i sent my friend a link to a record that is also $1540.00. 2 days ago it was $15. something's wacky.

holy shit, so weird. it's actually the same seller. wtf

discogs allows you to bulk upload items to your marketplace account for sale via a .csv file. I guess with an inventory of 25000 items this is what that seller does and that their prices got out of whack somehow in the process.

what i cant stand about discogs is the inflexiblity of postage rates. if im ordering one white label 12, theres no way the postage will be £2.75 or £3. very fucking annoying.

should that weigh less than a non white label?

xp OK that probably explains that

titchy are you saying that's over the odds? It's not if you consider postage plus if you have to buy a mailer!

i suppose. but white labels are still cheaper than normal lps.

i do like discogs though, the offers system is good too. some of the prices people put on their records though is ridiculous (and i do wonder if they do end up getting the prices they ask for).

what i cant stand about discogs is the inflexiblity of postage rates. if im ordering one white label 12, theres no way the postage will be £2.75 or £3. very fucking annoying.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Thursday, 17 September 2009 20:36 (18 minutes ago)

Postage rates have nothing to do with discogs though, they're entirely up to the individual seller, so I'm not sure what you mean by them being inflexible. You should contact the seller if you think they're charging over the odds.

I happily both send and receive offers on prices via discogs, often the listed price is just a ball park, or best hope, or even a stab in the dark if you're the only person selling an item.

Again, if you think something's over priced then just speak to the seller. No big deal. If they don't like your offer they'll ignore it or let you know. Easy as pie.

well i mean the indvidual seller obv, yeah.

I need to get rid of lots of dance vinyl - some desirable, some considerably less so - and ebay seems like a busted flush for this kind of thing: a few tumbleweed auctions surrounded by acres of Buy It Now postings from professional retailers. Has anyone here used it for selling recently? Is it better than ebay now? Does stuff shift fairly quickly or sit around for months?

I use discogs for buying and selling fairly often. For dance vinyl, I'd say it's def better than ebay. It's really quick and simple to list items, and there are no fees unless your items actually sell, whereas Ebay charges a listing fee. I have some things on discogs that have been sitting for quite a while now, but it all depends on what you have vs. how many others are selling the same item.

Best to put them on Discogs a couple bucks below whatever is the cheapest copy if you want to move it immediately. if you're in no hurry, put it at a good price, offer a discount for multiple items in the Comments field and wait.

Good advice. Thanks. Tbh I'm more interested in offloading most of it than making big £££.

ive put some stuff around the lowest price theyre listed at on discogs but still waiting to shift them. starting to think im possibly the only person buying old grime or dubstep 12s.

what does it mean when there's a color bar to the side of a release in discogs.

there's yellow, grey and orange here http://www.discogs.com/artist/Rolling+Stones%2C+The

If you hover over them it tells you.

ah! thank you. i've been searching for hours

So, if one were selling off a few hundred records of the psych / noise / jazz / indie variety, discogs over eBay, for sure? My issue with discogs (and, for CDs, Amazon) is the fact that things sell in spurts, with no deadline. It tends to make packing records and regular trips to the post office a full time job. Any advice?

i dunno, i always buy on discogs, sell on amazon. i don't want to wait for people to stumble over what i'm trying to unload, and on average, i get really good money from ebay sales.

i think the upside (sale price) on ebay is (or can be) higher, but the ease of doing stuff on discogs might be better, depending on how much hassle you're willing to go through

Yeah, I find Discogs has rarer stuff in the first place, and then for a more reasonable price than Amazon. If what you're selling is aimed at the collectors market or folks that may not look at Amazon first, Discogs is the way to go.

Thanks!

it feels good to sell rare-ish things on ebay for +£££s to people who don't know about discogs ;)

Coincidentally they just linked to this via their Facebook page:

http://www.discogs.com/blog/339369-top-30-most-expensive-items-sold-by-month

Advice on this:

Person contacts me on Discogs about an item that I am not listing for sale, offers me a large (but not obscene) amount for it, then paypals me with his "brother-in-law's" account and wants me to ship it to his sister (he's in Europe). Obviously I'm not going to ship it to anyone other than his brother-in-law (since anything else violates PayPal's Seller TOS) but should I even do that? Is this some sort of crazy elaborate scam to get a CD single? His Discogs rating is fine... but the whole thing seems pretty suspicious.

Obviously I will not accept the payment if I don't ship him anything btw.

I would just make sure to do delivery confirmation/insurance so he can't say it never arrived and file a claim with Paypal. That's the only scam I could think of if he already paid. Unless he somehow got hold of someone else's Paypal account but that seems far fetched.

Does seem a little suspicious to have done enough business on discogs to have a rating and yet you don't have your own Paypal acct?

Thanks for being such a big part of the Discogs community. If you’re anything like us, you collect more than just music.

With that in mind, we’re developing databases for other things we collect. We want to invite you to be one of the first people to see the work that only a few collectors and Discog’s staff members have built.

To get early access to the beta, just click what you’re into below and start submitting!

Submit My First Book

Submit My First Comic

Submit My First Film

hmmmm

hmm discogs is really a good database and have often thought it would be nice to be able to look up different editions of books/comics/movies instead of just doing ebay-searches but not sure if this seems like a greedy move or an enthusiast move, also not sure if such databases/market places already exist

also, any thoughts on whether the new tax policy will be very harmful to the 2nd hand market place? (apparently Discogs will add 25% tax or something for all orders going from US to EU)

Whoa- what? Really?

It's VAT that's now payable on *fees* paid by sellers at their local rate if they are in the EU. Fees are 8% of sales prices.

So it only applies to sellers in the EU and it's nothing to do with where orders are going. I think it works out to no more than around 1.8% on the price of a record in practice. Presumably VAT registered businesses would be able to claim it back as well so no need to pass it on to customers.

I'll give Discogs credit for hooking me up with a good guy from Norway who had a Neil Young tribute LP I'd been trying to get for eight years (Everybody Knows This Is Norway. It's worth more than I was prepared to pay, so he ripped the CD, put it up on Soulseek, and I got it from him that way.

The other thing I've listed on my want-list is a Velvet Underground tribute that came out in the late '80s. I get an e-mail every few weeks saying one's up for sale, but it's always around 20 pounds, which after conversion and shipping is just way out of my buying range.

It seems to be a good place to buy from. I've only had one negative experience I can think of where a cd arrived shattered because it was sent with neither jewel case or adequate padding.
May have been others but that is the only one came to mind. Think I got a refund but not the cd I wanted.
Discogs is also a reasonably ok resource though it does have gaps. I use it frequently when EACing cds I've bought when they're not in the EAC database. Tends to have tracklisting down for main release version at least.
Gap can be in what releases are listed though.
Would be useful to have reviews of lps and individual release versions too. I think there are some reviews on site but sporadic. There is rateyourmusic I guess. But would be useful.

I actually appreciate discogs more because of the lack of reviews. Everyone on Rateyourmusic considers themselves geniuses but they're really just a slightly better class of youtube commenter.

I had someone buy from me in Argentina but wanted me to ship to his sister in Chile as you are 'not allowed' more than two foreign packages a year or some such.

So I did, and it all went fine.

JUst thinking that it would make it a full resource if people said what they thought of the lp since it could help one work out which lps by an artist were worth getting. also which pressings/releases of which lp.
BUt I guess that most people going to discogs are doing so to buy material they're already aware of. Particularly marketplace.
Just thought if it was done right it could help the experience. But not sure how 'doing it right' would be achieved anyway since I can see what johnny's saying about rateyourmusic being true at least to some extent. Ego/opinion outweighing info etc

Do wonder where you get information on the best sounding versions of things from since it doesn't seem to be fully utilised on RYM and Amazon just mixes all reviews for all releases under a title together.

Of course anyone can post reviews on there and the entire database is user populated. The process of submitting release data excludes editorialising though, which is as it should or it would never get done and.disagreements would be endless.

I like that the site still feels a bit down-home and ungentrified. Not unlike this place really. My impression is that the staff are still enthusiasts for the most part.

discogs are reviews are great, it's either:
a) old school clubbers reminiscing and being crazy hyperbolic about old school house/rave
b) a bunch of people posting "repress please?" or "you gougers should be ashamed or yourself" (hip euro "underground" deep house 12"s on small labels)
c) some person posting "the label on my copy is more periwinkle than violet and 'chuggin gasoline' is about 6 seconds longer than on the original uk chiswick issue"

haha that is so spot on. absolutely love the reviews that fall into the first category, they always make me smile. also love visiting profiles and seeing something like "I have been spinning UK Garage records for more than two decades now and have thousands of records in my collection! UK GARAGE FOR LIFE!!!!!!"

It's like some completely different side of the internet where the majority of people seem incredibly passionate and cynicism doesn't exist.

I have the 2014 issue, does it need a new entry ?
or, can someone pleas do an entry for the 2014 issue so's I can add it to my collection.

Really got into buying cheap records off discogs the last few months, but now a seller seems really flakey, took ages to send records and stopped replying to messages and then was all like "I sent your records two days ago according to my records" but they've not arrived and now I'm like ugh ugh ugh.

I posted in the vinyl/scams thread a month ago about a dispute with a seller on Discogs who sent me the wrong record and then has refused to deal with me (e.g. he said "I have someone who handles discogs for me - email them" but then won't give me that person's email address).

I've opened up a PayPal dispute but they give the seller ages to respond and it hasn't happened yet.

So I just had a (maybe stupid) question about Discogs feedback: If I give him Poor feedback, can't he also just respond with Poor feedback for me? I have a perfect record and don't want to tarnish it because he's been a dick, you know? Thanks for any guidance....

Wouldn't he have to buy something from you to give you bad feedback?

I once had someone send me a copy of the second Neu! album instead of the first but it's dead good so I wasn't too bothered

No, you can give feedback as a seller as well as a buyer.

The record I got instead of the one I wanted was NOWHERE NEAR as good as Neu!s second LP, I can assure you

Hi gang - I have a question. I've recently spent over four weeks painstakingly entering my entire CD collection (with vinyl and cassettes planned for later) and was planning to print out this master list for safe keeping (in case, you know, Discogs doesn't exist at some point or something). Then I noticed the "export" feature. Is this what I think it is? A way to save all this data to a hard drive, or Word doc or something? Why must I "request" a data export? Once it's exported, it's copied, (not transferred), right? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Because of the amount of data, your export request will be queued and processed in the order it was received. We will email you when it is ready for download.

you could just copy and paste the list into an excel document or text file though, right?

It pops it out in Excel and it takes just a few seconds.

And yes it's just a copy.

Thanks!

xp not sure how copy and pasting would work. I may try that if I run into any problems doing what Alex suggested.

well yeah i can copy and paste 25 entries at a time but any more than that and it crashes excel.

hey but if you paste it into notepad and then copy and paste into excel it works.

Successfully did this and downloaded a zip in CSV format. Not ideal: I was hoping it would default to my alphabetical list (it seems to be going by catalog numbers, despite the fact that my Collection is currently organized alphabetically), and it's awfully difficult to read this way. Still, OCD nit-picking aside, this a far better solution than printing all 4,000 titles on what would be at least a full ream of paper. Thanks again!

https://www.imf.org/external/help/csv.htm

Helpful - thanks! Looks like the bottom of that page will solve my problem.

BTW, does anyone else do this? Print out their Discogs stuff (inventory, Collection, otherwise), I mean? My wife thinks I'm crazy. "Discogs isn't going anywhere," etc etc.

Well it can be good to have for insurance purposes, I guess.

Marketplace 1 For Sale from £35.25

Have: 17 Want: 7
Avg Rating: 3.75 / 5
Ratings: 4
Last Sold: 06 Jul 15
Lowest: £3.60
Median: £3.99
Highest: £4.32

seeing so much of this!

but someone will pay it, and in a few months time it will say

Marketplace 1 For Sale from £95.25

Highest: £35.25

Free money!

Here's the record in question...actually feeling this one might not sell (ive never heard it...and the video on the page...is some kind of error)

http://www.discogs.com/Various-003/release/197168?ev=item-vc

found some clips at juno...wont be adding that to my wishlist

Ordering a record from abroad plus a bunch of cheap makeweight stuff to lower the postage cost per record and act as stiffeners, then getting an email to say they don't actually have a copy of the one thing you really wanted anymore, but don't worry, all the other garbage has already been packed up and despatched to you

how much are the cheap makeweight ones and were they completely unhearable before you bought them?

Only four or five things for a couple of quid each, stuff I know and like well enough, but hardly records I would have elected to have sent to me transcontinentally in their own right. Can't even remember what they are tbh

Just an everyday tale of dumb luck really

In that case I always complain and make sure I get at least a very substantial refund.

I often add cheap records if ive no idea what they are and cant hear them otherwise

the exchange rate for US dollars is as favorable as it has been for years, but man those int'l shipping fees add up.

another way to look at it - I've been spoiled rotten by Amazon Prime.

Marketplace 1 For Sale from £723.44

Order Date Condition Sleeve Condition Price in your currency Price
2014-03-30 Very Good Plus (VG+) Very Good Plus (VG+) £6.64
2013-09-04 Near Mint (NM or M-) Not Graded £499.64
2011-03-26 Near Mint (NM or M-) Generic £265.79
2010-07-04 Very Good Plus (VG+) Not Graded £199.99
2007-01-24 Mint (M) Generic £5.71
2006-05-23 Mint (M) £34.98

wow

Boots mixed in with genuine articles? Not supposed to happen of course.

or with cover/without cover maybe as per the "generic" tag

Bear in mind, sometimes the lowest price is because it sold for £10 when first issued, and now it sold out and prices have shot up.

what item is that?

http://www.discogs.com/Jeremy-Semi-Structured-Life/release/566640

okaaayy

http://www.discogs.com/sell/item/255027859

I saw some some expensive autographed LPs on the wall at Amoeba the other day and I don't understand the idea of selling something that's "autographed" without a certificate of authenticity.

a piece of vinyl and some instructions

http://www.discogs.com/Honeymoon-Production-Manipulation-Muzak/release/1102919

I love all of those RRR anti-records conceptually, but I don't actually own any.... I do have multiple copies of the lock groove releases.

I own this record. Didn't realize it was going for so much.

semi related... has anyone bought collections or groupings of records before? If so how did you find them? I would love, say, to get a bunch of BOMP records, or a disco collection, or whatever, but most things you can find online seem to be a bunch of crap, horribly maintained, or both.

A DJ in Seattle sold/consigned his collection to Silver Platters. There were so many they had their own section of the store. It was a gold mine for weeks. You can see who has the most records in your wantlist in Discogs. Can be useful and frustrating. There's a shop in Denmark that has 18 records I want and I only have 50 on my want list.

MYT profile:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/media/discogs-turns-record-collectors-obsessions-into-big-business.html?ref=topics&_r=1

NYT, sorry

dying @ photo

haha yes

kinda funny typo halfway through

The site, once run from a computer in Mr. Lewandowski’s closet and originally restricted to electronic music, has grown rapidly. It now has 37 employees around the world, 20 million online visitors a month and three million registered users. It eventually opened to all genres of music and has a mission of cataloging every record in existence.

oh wait, i thought that said 37 MILLION employees. kinda not funny misreading there by me

I dunno. I think it's funnier.

otm

discogs.com, 2020's skynet

since i'm on a fucking ROLL in this thread i'll share the only other recent discogs anecdote that i have.

i don't have any of my records up for sale, but i do have them cataloged so that if my apartment ever burns down i can hopefully point the insurance company to the value estimates on my discogs page and then take the cool hard cash and move to a secret cave abutting countryside acres.

anyway, the other day i was surprised to receive a discogs message asking if i would be selling one of my records. it was for little wings' Wonderue, a record i would totally be willing to sell. i didn't realize it was kind of rare and fetches a decent price. unfortunately it's the ONE record i purchased new that i didn't take care of properly. in lol undergrad i was attempting to make some really, REALLY good art and used the Wonderue cover as a makeshift lap/table underneath a paper that i covered with black sharpie markings. when i finished my masterpiece i realized the sharpie bled through all over poor ol' wonderue. i had to tell the inquiring discogs buyer that i couldn't sell it to him due to lol college. no response from him for some reason!!

questions from would-be buyers are what made me change my collection to private viewing

I've made hundreds selling records I never played and had no idea were valuable by having people ask me to sell on Discogs.

I get ppl asking me if I want to buy a record on my want list that they're selling, but honestly they're so merry and polite I don't mind.

man I wish people would ask me about stuff on my want list!

xp have you never sorted yr collection by median value? very educational.

xp great story Karl, thx for sharing

http://www.oregonlive.com/music/index.ssf/2016/02/10_most_expensive_discogs_records.html#12

wow $6K for a Judge record, who knew?

http://revelationrecords.com/pressing/where/

They did!

Wow, there are two of these in my immediate area. If I ever need to hear some garbage ass NYHC I'll have to make some calls.

discogs app is near!

http://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=33622

As someone who works in a record store? Great. I'll have every asshole on earth looking everything up and trying to lowball me for every piece of rare vinyl so he can flip it on Discogs.

Unlike every record store owner who checks Discogs to try to fleece their regulars by pricing at or near highest sold price. It's a two way street.

nah man, every store I've ever been in prices via the median sale value

I feel sorry for yr local stores if they are pricing on the high end there.

Yeah, that's generally true where i'm shopping too, I just thought i'd make a broad, unfair generalization too. FYI. If i'm in your shop, I will be looking at Discogs. Every time. I check to see if I have the record already, I check to see if you have priced it fairly. I check to see if there's a different pressing of the album i'd rather have. I also will preview everything on either Spotify or YouTube, saving you the hassle of arranging a listening station for me. Sometimes I do find a record that is more valuable than you've priced it. A few times i've flipped the record. It's generally not worth the effort though. If, as a record store owner, you found a record at Goodwill that was grossly underpriced, what would you do? Usually, if I don't want it for my personal collection, i'll tell you it's worth more than it's priced.

People who are using Discogs in your store aren't always trying to rip you off.

i love discogs so damn bad

mwah

Unlike every record store owner who checks Discogs to try to fleece their regulars by pricing at or near highest sold price. It's a two way street.

Thankfully this does not seem to be the case at Toronto places I've been looking at lately. For example, scored a NM copy of one of my favorite albums, Pinetop Seven's The Night's Bloom, for $4.49 CAD. Tends to go for around $20 US on Discogs.

god bless reckless records in chicago which routinely prices stuff lower (often significantly lower) than the internet prices in the interest of keeping inventory moving. some of the stores around here price on the high end i guess figuring they might as well get as much out of each sale as possible, but the result is often that stuff just sits on the shelves for ever and ever.

My local store obv knows what stuff is worth but he says as a store you want stock moving in and out constantly, if that means making less than it's theoretically worth its still good business - it's a river not a lake as he says

In the UK I'm not sure if record shops use discogs at all or if they do they just double the price, most record shops are way more expensive than discogs prices. I suppose I usually just view it as a premium charge to be able to look at the record before you buy it. And then I usually just buy it on discogs anyway. I suppose that's why they've mostly all closed down.

That's why whenever I go to the USA, I come back with loads of records, because the prices are just so much cheaper.

I just listed a cassette for sale and a guy ordered it approx two minutes later. can you change your settings to get alerts as soon as something you want comes up or was it just happenstance? presuming it's not related to the app bc that starts tomorrow apparently?

yeah you can set it so that if something from yr wantlist is added for sale then you get an email

god bless reckless records in chicago which routinely prices stuff lower (often significantly lower) than the internet prices in the interest of keeping inventory moving.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, February 26, 2016 7:07 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My local store obv knows what stuff is worth but he says as a store you want stock moving in and out constantly, if that means making less than it's theoretically worth its still good business - it's a river not a lake as he says

― robbie ca$hflo (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, February 26, 2016 7:10 PM (2 days ago)

^^^ approach taken by any/every store worth shopping at. like sure, pull a few prizes out and slap 'em up on the wall with a heartbreak sticker for the desperate and overpaid, but price everything else to flippin' move.

suggestion that there aren't any decent vinyl shops in UK is quietly blowing my mind

there are some but its true that its exxxpensive

It seems like it's down.

www.discogs.com

Works for me

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/discogs.com

ah,thanks.

I've never paid that much attention to listings that say "from a non-smoking home" before, but only because I had never - before today - received a record that STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN of thousands of cigarettes; like decades of stale ass - the wax itself reeks. I've actually had to put the record outside to see if that will help. I expect I'll just toss it - just holding the thing for a couple minutes meant my hands and clothes stank. (And I'm not some pathological anti-smoking tut-tutter - this was just INSANE)

Ugh. That's the worst >=I

Damn man. Last ditch resort, if you paid a fair amount for it, you might try getting some activated charcoal from an aquarium store and putting it in a sealed bag with the jacket. Record might need to be physically cleaned if it has tobacco residue on it, though.

I remember a few entire CD collections that we bought in that were caked in years or decades worth of brown cigarette smoke residue - it's horrible. We clean them off with surgical spirit and it's vile.

Yeah, if anything can put you off smoking, looking at those dark yellow jewel cases might be just the thing to do it. So gross

I've never paid that much attention to listings that say "from a non-smoking home" before, but only because I had never - before today - received a record that STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN of thousands of cigarettes; like decades of stale ass - the wax itself reeks. I've actually had to put the record outside to see if that will help. I expect I'll just toss it - just holding the thing for a couple minutes meant my hands and clothes stank. (And I'm not some pathological anti-smoking tut-tutter - this was just INSANE)

― Your Ribs are My Ladder, Tuesday, April 26, 2016 9:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are you sure it wasn't on limited-edition nicotine-infused 180g vinyl?

spray some perfume on it.

It's one of those frustrating ones where it was cheap - about $10 - but I've been waiting to see it pop up for a couple of years and this is the first copy I'd seen (it's just a slice of '90s indie rock with a personal connection). Airing it out outside didn't help! The other thing I forgot to say is the cover has a sort of *film* on it - like a smudgeable condensation of lung butter. It's so grody

(I'm going to toss it - but thanks for your tips either way!)

What album is it?

You could also try cleaning the sleeve with a paper towel slightly dampened (not wet) with some water or Windex. Not to be captain save-a-record.

It's a local San Diego indie band from the late 90s called The And Ors - a record I have a personal connection to but never had on vinyl (x-post)

Thanks for the wipe down tip - going to give it a shot

good opportunity to try out the wood glue method of record cleaning? also furniture polish is p good at de-gunking sleeves

i'd never even thought it was possible for record sleeves, let alone actual vinyl, to become stinky with cigarette smoke.

clothes and soft furnishings, yes, goes without saying.

cardboard is pretty porous, and I guess vinyl is an organic compound so it's probably good at having stuff adhere to it too

This is something of a series of idle musings, but I'm sat on a few early 90s death metal records that seem to go for silly money on Discogs and I'm wondering whether to go ahead and sell or, well, to carry on sitting on them. I'm never going to listen to Malevolent Creation or Suffocation again, but there's something to be said for a collection, right? And I wonder about cutting ties with the past. Yadda yadda.

There's probably not a right or wrong answer to any of these ramblings, but anyone got any sound advice?

Just "Be nice, and accurate in yr record gradings"

And remember, the things that you own, own you back.

I've actually had to put the record outside to see if that will help.

Ha, I've done this.

This is something of a series of idle musings, but I'm sat on a few early 90s death metal records that seem to go for silly money on Discogs and I'm wondering whether to go ahead and sell or, well, to carry on sitting on them. I'm never going to listen to Malevolent Creation or Suffocation again, but there's something to be said for a collection, right? And I wonder about cutting ties with the past. Yadda yadda.

There's probably not a right or wrong answer to any of these ramblings, but anyone got any sound advice?

― Sunn O))) Brother Where Art Thou? (Chinaski), Saturday, June 11, 2016 6:19 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sell those. At some point they'll probably get reissued on vinyl and the price for originals will fall, if not plummet.

The difference between me in my late twenties and me in my late thirties is now if I have five records that will pay a month's rent, I sell them and don't even think about it.

https://www.discogs.com/Prince-Black-Album/release/6454285

Last Sold: 22 Apr 16
Lowest: $15,000.00
Median: $15,000.00
Highest: $15,000.00

!

http://recordmecca.com/item-archives/prince-impossibly-rare-1987-first-pressing-the-black-album-lp/

Over the years, a handful of original CD copies have surfaced, selling from $3000 to $10,000.

lol

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there weren't any "original" CDs until the proper release in 1994. . . right?

https://img.discogs.com/lTwfDAr2aRfwPzHu0q6jeFIsZ_Q=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-2358778-1279356621.jpeg.jpg

Long-box

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5425117de4b0cee49991efae/t/5726b811e707eb7c1fdac9c3/1462155282582/R-2358778-1438127930-8371.jpeg.jpg?format=500w

disc

Ha, longboxes.

coolest longbox ever

I'd say sell and then use the money for something else makes you happy - like your favorite turntable or smth

Bought a record from the US, to be shipped to the UK. Seller shipped to the UK via USPS, but it hasn't arrived. Checked the USPS website and with the tracking number the seller gave me, the record was delivered to my house two weeks ago. Except it wasn't. In the process of trying to contact USPS to see where package has actually been delivered, I discover that they don't accept enquiries from foreign addressees and that I must either get the US seller to contact USPS by phone himself, or get the UK post office to contact the USPS. Neither of which seems like it will result in any joy.

What's the deal with customs in the UK - how long would I have to wait to hear from them if there are charges on the item (which was only $26, and cost me a further $35 postage)? Is it possible its still just sitting at UK customs at this point?

I am never, ever, ever buying a record from the US ever again.

Had a similar problem with Parcelforce and Juno. Got nowhere with Parcelforce, over several days. Juno sent a replacement batch while Parcelforce were still mucking around, and took the whole issue off my hands. I love Juno.

Sadly this was an individual seller and a relatively hard-to-get thing - a guessing I'll just have to wait and see if customs are going to charge it and get in touch with me.

Not impossible that customs has it and you will need to pay VAT plus the Post Office Extortion Fee aka 'handling charge' of about £8.50.

Robbing bastards.

I am never, ever, ever buying a record from the US ever again.

This is why you must come visit and handle it directly, of course.

I have to say that in general the marketplace has been really helpful for me lately -- talked about why on here -- and so far no glitches, but once or twice I have been surprised at shipping costs from the UK and Europe. One time I was hesitant to complete the transaction but they were pretty hard to get items in good condition so I shrugged and ate it, though I made a mental note to steer clear of that particular seller if I could find things elsewhere. But more typically what's happened is that what looks like a good deal on the face of it becomes just as expensive as anything else might be once shipping is factored in. One time I went "Never mind" and did what I probably should have done to start with and order it from the label that originally released it!

I'm always surprised at any orders I get coming from outside Europe, as shipping is almost always as much as the actual purchase price!

To the USA standard airmail for a single LP will cost just under £9 at a minimum. Double LPs are more likely £12 if packaged decently. Get it tracked and signed and it's more like £13 and £16 respectively.

I misread the packaging pricing! Had no idea it would cost me $$$$36! Could have got a copy of the record cheaper in the UK as a result (and also post-Brexit conversion rate, fuck me that's savage)

(trust me i am always trying to finagle passage to your fair nation, ned!)

I paid $40 for the newest Lissvik LP direct from Smalltown Supersound. I could buy it on Discogs right now and with shipping from Europe, it would still be cheaper than direct from the label.

Poland is the country I avoid. It might just be me, but packages from there take a really really long time to arrive to the US. Long enough that you will have given up on the order before it arrives, and when it arrives you go "oh, this."

It's a shame that NSBM/RAC records are banned from sale. Like I get that it's just to minimize the chance of someone in the moral grievance business writing a "hate music is being sold on discogs!" article and them losing business, but all that does is force people who want to buy them to directly give money to whatever nazi label produces them. Seems really shortsighted.

If the record doesn't arrive and its not the seller's fault and they've been helpful but the record still doesn't arrive, what should one do wrt feedback? my instinct is to give good feedback but i am generally a wuss about such things

I'd say no feedback, unless they request it or something and you want to oblige

I have so many records to sell in G+/VG condition, the grading is nerve wracking

Ok so I was so, so sceptical about the discogs marketplace. Thought it was a hassle, had epic bidding wars on eBay in mind towering over fixed price stuff. But last week, on an afternoon where I had nothing else to do, I decided to put some twenty odd records on there I don't really care for anymore (moving houses next year probably anyway). And it's been raining orders ever since. As of tonight they're all gone! In one week! And this is 75-125 euros a piece records I'm talking about, I am genuinely surprised there's people about still wanting to pay the fair (popsike, rec collector and whathaveyou researched) fixed price.

the amount of speculation that goes on with new european house 12"s is really shitty. suspect the labels themselves are behind some of it.

I've only sold a few things there, but I've never had a problem, except for once, when I forgot to set geographical limits on bids and some Russian wanted to buy something.

I just bought a copy of Painkiller's Rituals: Live in Japan (a Japanese-only release, long out of print) from some dude in Norway this week. No jewel case, but it still has the obi strip.

Lurve Discogs. I find the prices really fair, but then again I buy strictly CDs. I can almost always find what I'm looking for in great condition. Between Amazon, AmazonUK, eBay and Discogs I'm very happy.

I've just started selling. Listed the first 30 records yesterday afternoon, got my first order this morning. That was quick.

I've sold stuff on Discogs for years now, countries all over the place. Never had an issue.

Would anyone who's sold on discogs be kind enough to offer any tips they have for setting things up? Supplies to get before listing records for sale? Where to get the right boxes? Can I just make a trip to the post office and get everything there? Cardboard cut-outs for padding?

I'm not sure exactly how to determine shipping prices and options. Do I just need to visit the post office and take some notes?

Any help is much appreciated. I'm excited to start doing this.

ok i'm figuring this shit out lol.

Media Mail for a record to anywhere in the continental US is usually just north of $3. Basic record mailers don't come from the USPS. You'll have to buy them at a shipping supplies store or online (you can get them in bulk orders of 100 for less than $30 if you dig around). Then just pick up a roll of bubble wrap somewhere local and you're all set.

thank you!

Here's yr mailers.

http://www.4bubble.com/50-lp-record-mailers-w-free-shipping-513.html

👍

also - take the records out of the sleeves and ship them in separate inners, packed tightly - this prevents the records from splitting the seams of the record sleeve during shipment, which has happened to me on both ends :(

oh yeah, good tip

sleeve otm, but oversized mailers should be mandatory (imho). nothing worse than getting a record that's lived a good life, only to have one or more corner smashed in shipping.

haven't shopped around for options (since I never get around to selling anything), but here's one example:

http://whiplash-shipping-supplies.myshopify.com

if you're shipping records of value, find an option that is slightly rectangular, provides a crumple zone for your postal person.

For 45s, I place the sleeve at the bottom of a wraparound cardboard mailer, then add a stiffener, then the record inside a polythene sleeve, then another stiffener on top. I seal the mailer with masking tape, then put it inside a rectangular padded envelope.

The pro-rata packaging costs are included in my shipping cost calculations, and the final figure is pretty much the same as everyone else's (slightly lower, if anything) - so the message here is that there's no need to labour over cheaper home made alternatives, just buy the proper products and charge it back.

The nice surprise - I'm new to this too - was discovering that PayPal lets you pay for your postage and prints your address labels, thus eliminating the need to queue at a post office.

It's all going remarkably well so far. Stuff is shifting, ratings are coming in, and I've had a couple of large private bulk orders. Luckily, I had my full inventory of titles already to hand, so I'd recommend getting that done too. (No need to grade and value them in advance, you can do that when the wish list comes in.)

you guys are awesome. thank you.

Pro tip, when you first start packing stuff and you think you're done, give the mailer a firm shake up and down and then left and right. If anything rattles or moves, open it up and put in another cardboard flat or empty sleeve in there... helps keep the sleeve from being damaged (corner bumps, etc) in transit.

how's this goin for you so far, map?

i'm waiting for my lp mailers to get here on monday. ground shipping from new jersey on those, sheesh. i got mailers, cardboard flats, record sleeves and bubble wrap. on amazon because i have a store card with them and the other supply website wanted something ridiculous for shipping.

i'm going to finish cataloging my house/tech and figure out the shipping options this weekend. shooting to list on monday.

also got packing tape.

I've just had an order from someone who signed up to discogs that same day (zero feedback and profile otherwise blank) looking for overseas shipping (Poland from UK) who has paid the asking price for something I had available for best offer. Not sure if/how to proceed...

Um, what's the issue?

It seems the dude has seen the record they have been looking for, and does not want to haggle in case someone else gets in before him/her.

Happens all the time. Ship it via tracked post if you are worried.

Thanks for the advice, yeah will ship tracked, haven't sold outside of the UK before so was slightly nervy about returns/if there is an issue etc

every user has to start somewhere! but if you are that concerned you could always send a message and see how the reply comes out?

Yeah feel bad for doubting (don't want to come across like those ebay "ZERO FEEDBACK BIDDERS NEED NOT APPLY" people), just haven't encountered before. Just sent them a message anyway

I've shipped all over the world, never had any kind of issue beyond the ' this ain't as good as' type things (all resolved happily)

(had a few whoa this is way better than' in mitig.

iirc you can tweak selling preferences to prevent this? I know some sellers require feedback > 95% or something?

So there is an ongoing process of counterfeit, bootleg and other kinds of 'unofficial' releases being blocked from sale.

It's not clear why now (previously only relatively few releases would be blocked, usually due to abhorent content or specific copyright claims,) but it seems likely there's some pressure being exerted by an industry body.

Andy (from Balearic Social) had a thread on this on FB the other day:

https://www.facebook.com/AndyPye10/posts/10155574831424414?pnref=story

So there is an ongoing process of counterfeit, bootleg and other kinds of 'unofficial' releases being blocked from sale.

It's not clear why now (previously only relatively few releases would be blocked, usually due to abhorent content or specific copyright claims,) but it seems likely there's some pressure being exerted by an industry body.

So where do I sell my guy called Gerald white label?

I've always wondered if the edits scene (at least the vinyl sales side) would come crashing to a halt if Discogs, Juno etc get spooked away from selling them.

I've noticed some items being blocked from sale, are they now removing the entries entirely?

apparently not, based on that FB thread

They already allow digital files to be added to the site but not sold on the marketplace, so it's an easy change for them to make.

Just blocked from the marketplace.

As long as they exist and meet some basic criteria, releases are never supposed to be removed from the database once entered. Occasionally to the annoyance of artists who'd like to curate their history.

The basic Discogs rule is that you can create an entry but you have to own the specific release.

I did create an entry for the Alberto's 12" radio version of "Snuff Rock" even though I didn't own one. I do now though, thanks to ebay..

Oh, and I've had a few 'unofficial' Beatles CDs 'withdrawn from sale' recently. I'd sell them on ebay nut I'm guessing one person is acting for The Beatles, maybe.

I got ripped off by a discogs seller for the first time this week. Should've looked more closely at his feedback. His account disappeared once I flagged the transaction. Still waiting for PayPal to do stuff. Oh well, nbd, wasn't a huge purchase.

I clicked on something the other day funnily enough that came up saying you are not allowed to sell it

Noticed this today with an unofficial Van Der Graaf CD we were selling.

We had a bunch of stuff listed that's been taken down. Seems utterly pointless to me other than as an industry exercise in heavy-handed copyright bullshit...

Led Zep and Dylan bootlegs (surprise!) mostly. Seems like the thing to do now is put them up on eBay as a buy it now at the price you want and hope someone buys before the copyright dicks show up (we sold a Dylan 10LP Toasted set that way).

yeah all the ROIO/unofficial items in my collection are no longer listed for sale and have no value, so much for using it as an estimator. good thing we still have popsike.

nah, scratch that, just the Velvet Underground stuff. I don't have as many boots as I used to, esp. CD ones

I wonder if the hammer's going to come down against all 'unofficial' product writ large or just specific cherry picked estates. I feel it could get hairy with lots of new grey area vinyl reissues a la Lilith, B 13, Since 1972, Phoenix, Plain etc

Of those at least Phoenix has been blocked, I think.

An unrelated hypothetical question; does stuff where the copyright might be held in another territory count as grey?

https://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=39760

I noticed this while browsing the listing for a Robert Fripp boot I already have. Because Fripp is so pernickety about this stuff I initially assumed that he had personally contacted Discogs and told them to take it down. Didn't realize it was a more widespread thing. Anyway someone has posted a message on the release page saying he has a copy for sale so this might be a workaround.

Fripp's stuff has actually been blocked from sale for some time.

I wonder if the hammer's going to come down against all 'unofficial' product writ large or just specific cherry picked estates.

Weirdly one of the first things that got blocked was this grey-area 2cd reissue of some anime soundtrack so I'm thinking it's Discogs policing themselves.

obscure anime soundtrack, that should be.

"As an organisation where many of us are musicians, record collectors and even label owners, we are and will continue to be zealous in improving Discogs for our trusting community which also includes many recording musicians, labels and publishers,"

Like a computer generated it from a cloud of random corporate bullshit terms tailored specifically to Discogs

Some REM bootlegs have been blocked but not others. Looks pretty slapdash to me.

It's mostly been going by labels. Some things have previously been blocked piecemeal (one version but not another, usually a mistake.)

I had a No Neck Blues Band bootleg (which I presume they did themselves?) removed from sale a few weeks ago so they seem to working through it quite slowly.

If they're getting rid of No Neck boots then surely everything is destined to go.

they're doing books now https://www.bookogs.com/

^hope that takes off and makes it easy to buy s/h stuff for cheap without having to resort to Amazon

someone ordered poss the only bootleg I had for sale? (Genetic Control 7") about an hour ago, prob coincidental but maybe not

Abebooks is already fine for second-hand books though.

Xpost its likely "buy yr boots now before the squad catch on"

Abebooks is Amazon tho

oh shit they're going to ruin the used book market now, too? awesome

Awesome (despite the abysmal name)

Recently changed from biblio.gs (the url still works.)

You can see why but ugh.

Many of the listings on Abebooks are wildly overpriced, moreso than on Amazon Marketplace.

here's the store that ripped me (and a bunch of other discogs buyers) off if anyone's in Poland and feeling mischievous: http://sundrecords.pl

weird, when I sort my collection by median value the VU "Caught Between The Twisted Stars" 4CD set still shows up in the top 250 most expensive, even though it no longer lists a median price.

going on six days with zero response from seller on an order

I filed a "seller not responding" report, but am I correct that there is no way for me to cancel the order on my end?

maybe they're away for the week?

btw is there a way of switching on a holiday message somehow?

good question!

Not on discogs, no. Wish there was.

There is, on eBay.

I usually just put a conspicuous "***OUT OF TOWN UNTIL...***" note at the top of my "seller's shipping information" page, and there's no excuse for not checking that before ordering. You can always add something in the comment section for each item (which you can do that for multiple items in your inventory).

People don't check the shipping information though. Someone bought a CD single off me last night, they're in the UK, clearly says £1.35 shipping for a CD single, they then sent me a message asking how much shipping would be.

I checked :)

the seller has five more days to respond fwiw

That happened to me once earlier this year and after 7 days I think discogs cancelled the order

I usually just put a conspicuous "***OUT OF TOWN UNTIL...***" note at the top of my "seller's shipping information" page

oh yeah, good idea! bold and underlined, take note suckers

if you go to marketplace -> inventory you can "unlist" everything and then "mark for sale" when you get back

I wonder if that's why stuff falls out of my cart and I have to go back and re-add it.

ah, that would work too - thank you brimstead!

"Expire All For Sale Items" is what you want. Then you can easily relist all those in one go. It's at the bottom of the Inventory page under "With entire inventory".

Unresponsive sellers at this point really are in the wrong business. If you're that involved in online selling, you undoubtedly have an internet connection in your pocket. Inexcusable.

Within reason. Folks still have lives to lead and for many it's not business but just something on the side, so I'd always forgive (and hope to be forgiven for) a day or two or three's delay on messaging. Personally I don't think it's worth de-listing inventory just because I know I'm going to be too busy for online stuff for a few days.

I just say "Might be a while, I'm out of the country", every time they've just said "no problem" like I have when it's been the other way around.

Unresponsive sellers at this point really are in the wrong business. If you're that involved in online selling, you undoubtedly have an internet connection in your pocket. Inexcusable.

or you have a job and it might take you a day to be able to check the runout groove on a record in your cupboard for some dickhead from France who then asks if you can send a $3.23 sale for free instead of the A$24.70 it will cost you at POS, not counting time & labour & materials

That's besides the point. You have an internet connection in your pocket, you can easily respond and say, "No."

nine days now with zero response from seller, I think three more until the order gets cancelled automatically

That's besides the point. You have an internet connection in your pocket, you can easily respond and say, "No."

You have an internet connection in your pocket, you should constantly go to the office toilets to check it, and reply "NO SALE FUCK OFF" to all enquiries, if you have a job and are not home to immediately check what background colour the cover sticker on some 1997 CD single is

Ha, that happened. I got a "sorry no thanks" to a Sleeper 12" in mint condition that was short of one sticker.

i have a job

being reliable and consistent is good

check what background colour the cover sticker on some 1997 CD single is

yeah but this is just musical dorkism of which you don't approve or whatever, and you're bashing it on ILM to boot, these things are important!!!

but i say if people are being unreasonable and treating you like amazon, that's definitely fucked

so everybodys right

I 100% approve of people asking annoying, tediously nerdy questions about something I have for sale, or exact postage to whatever country on the other side of an entire planet that they live on, which is why I answer them. It's Austin who says it's "inexcusable" to actually bother to find out the answer before replying.

fair enough

this one buyer sent me a message saying "I trust you are being honest about condition blah blah blah" regarding the G graded records he was buying... I was all "umm you might want to look at the grading guide" and was expecting major hassle but he ended up being delighted with the records and sent me a very sweet thank you note later on. It felt nice because I do try to grade as strict as I can, as if I was the one doing the buying

Did I say that?

Pretty sure I did not.

I just said that no response was not acceptable. "Let me check and get back to you within (time frame)" is obviously the acceptable response if the question cannot be immediately answered.

Austin, I love you as a poster, but these past few days seems like there's been a lot of negativity in your posts. You're totally justified in being critical, but if there's something personal behind this I hope you're OK. This coming from a guy who only knows you from a message board, so please ignore if this is stepping over the line or just completely unwarranted.

I wanna call out small-time seller "ingoodstanding" for selling me a G rated piece of shit advertised as "NM/VG+," for charging me extra for domestic shipping above the quoted rate on his page, and for being a dickbag in general and treating me like I haven't been spending enough money on records in the past twenty years to buy a house or two.

the record was sir edward's "the power of feeling" btw. good record. I like david lee's drumming on it. totally conservative median price.

seller in my case was suspended for not responding. since they never responded with a shipping amount, I never sent them money, so it's all done.

i love putting something up for sale and getting a buyer like 10 minutes later

My record is one minute. Which made me think I could have priced it higher.

That's always my first thought when something sells the first day/hour/minute heh.

My record is one minute. Which made me think I could have priced it higher.

yeah, I put up a CD that had never sold before, at a wildly speculative $92

sold within minutes to a guy who'd messaged me directly a few months before and offered $350 for a 7" that had one track in common with the CD

What was it???

Heen Beat, a sampler CD for a local indie label of the mid-'90s.

Do bootlegs matter? What Discogs’ new crackdown means for the site’s future

https://thevinylfactory.com/features/do-bootlegs-matter-what-discogs-new-crackdown-means-for-future/

They blocked an old bootmix 12" I had on sale for £3 yesterday.

I reposted it on a different 'version' which was exactly the same.

I'm not sure why some people (like one quoted in the article above) seem to be under the impression that items blocked from sale can't still be included in collection catalogues on the site.

That shouldn't be affected. Actually even if releases were removed fully (they aren't) you can include private 'draft' release submissions in collections.

After a week, emailed a seller (from a record store!) and asked "uh hey any news on that CD I ordered from you?" Two days later "oh sorry! i'll check if we have this at our warehouse but i'm pretty sure we already looked....can you check back tomorrow?"

Like, uh, can you know if you checked and maybe message me, the guy who is trying to give you money, if you find it?

And... order cancelled.

a dreaded bmg club edition... gah!

I dunno why I thought I'd find some interesting records when I checked the marketplace for most expensive releases this year
https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?sort=price%2Cdesc&limit=250&q=&ev=sr&year=2017¤cy=GBP&page=1

Quaeschning* & Schnauss* - Among Mannatees / Off-Theater Final Season (10", EP, Ltd)

New seller
Ships From:United Kingdom

£500.00

Unplayed. Impulse buy. Selling for less than the price I paid.

Slowdive 12" for 2000 pounds?!?!

It's getting so crowded where I live, sometimes commute wise there's just no escape

I dunno why I thought I'd find some interesting records when I checked the marketplace for most expensive releases this year
https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?sort=price%2Cdesc&limit=250&q=&ev=sr&year=2017¤cy=GBP&page=1🕸

lol zing hanging on to rejected half post for ile thread

where do you find the monthly ones?

Six grand for a Max Bygraves EP? Good luck with that.
https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/338949683

niels, they blog about the monthlies...

https://blog.discogs.com/en/top-30-most-expensive-releases-sold-discogs-august-2017/

and all the monthlies are listed here:

https://www.discogs.com/user/discogs/lists?header=1

^ The above being actual things that have sold rather than prices of things that have not sold ;-)

If people were really paying £2000 for Slowdive 12s I'd be digging out ticket stubs to auction.

xp that's so cool, will be checking out those records!

Quite a few weird updates being rolled out to collections without any beta testing, it would seem. Takes as long as 20 seconds to load the page and doesn't remember your previous page or view.

Interested if anyone else here uses discogs for their collections and is a underwhelmed by the updates.

https://strawpoll.com/5xxypbxg

will check it out, thanks

i can't spot anything new at my end tbh. everything works fine afaict apart from having to log in to the phone app all the frigging time.

I use Discogs for my collection, it was a lot of work but I can pretty much find anything I have a half-thought about now. As opposed to 'hey I'll buy another one it'll be here quick enough'

Not seen the updates..

The updates have been rolled out to members with less than 1400 entries.
From a forum here are some images of the old v new cover layout that will no doubt be rolled out to the rest of the users before too long.
https://imgur.com/t2kOHPy
https://imgur.com/mDgr1CA

Hmmm.

Dunno.

The issue is mainly for users who use the cover view. If you have more than 100 records, 3-4 records in a massive format just aren't practical. The old format worked fine for all.

oh fuck that, give me the damn artist and title links

I use that view a lot

Wonder if the updates are connected to any pressure they’re feeling from the new Reverb records site? Haven’t explored that yet, but with the time I’ve invested entering part of my collection, I’m pretty well committed to discogs.

The list view with no pictures has been removed too fwiw and the max listing per page is 50. It also takes ages to load 10-20 seconds from the link being clicked.

oh bollocks that does not sound good at all!

if they do the same thing to your want list, then you won't just be able to just scan through them to see what for sale and for roughly how much

i'm about halfway through entering my collection on to it - mostly a small mountain of general cds and all of my jazz / blues / world stuff and classical to go, a lot of which i suspect i'll need to add myself. not sure how it handles classical, have shied away from that after a shitty itunes experience.

oh shit, i still need to add all my singles too!

if anyone has the urge to be discogs buddies btw - whatever the heck that entails - my empire of tat resides here:

https://www.discogs.com/user/Mount_Analogue/collection?header=1

the one good thing about the new layout (especially if it carries over to the app) is that it looks a lot easier just to view certain genres, which would be handy for example if you were walking into a jazz store and you just wanted to check what jazz records were on your wantlist.

i do love some of those jarring juxtapositions you get when there's no genre sort though, i think my favourite atm in my collection is the shadow ring rubbing shoulders with shakatak

I wish there was a way to only see wantlist results for items being shipped from your specific country. It could work like an advanced search. I'm not paying $24 to someone to ship a $10 record, but it seems like 80% of my wantlist results are sellers in Europe and the uk

I buy a lot of techno, though, so

you can set it to only display records priced in USD, on the left side of the screen.

I know you can - once you search. But is there a way to only get wantlist results in US dollars?

oh, I see. not that I know of, but you can go to the "Items I Want" drop-down from the marketplace tab, that displays everything currently for sale in your list, then change to USD.

New collection view gives me the fantods. Fuck paging through 50 items at a fucking time. Fuck the three (!) ineradicable value columns that force descriptive notes into a space about an inch wide. Dipshitted.

xp that's a good hack! thanks. Always wondered about the difference was between "Items I Want" and "Wantlist"

xp vote "yes" here:

https://strawpoll.com/5xxypbxg

The format and genre filters in the new layout don't work for me. For too much or nothing at all.

There's an official survey here that you may be able to get some requests met - the developers have been awol since rolling out this view through so I don't think they're that bothere with what users want
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JC2DQ5Y

I'm not paying $24 to someone to ship a $10 record

if an individual, as opposed to an intentional postage service, can get it to you for $24 that's pretty impressive tbh

pedantry on a discogs thread

Well I am shocked sir, shocked

based on the number of people who would enquire as to postage for a 12" to their country, I would package up the specific record they asked after, take it to the post office and get a quote, then get berated and rejected for giving them the actual price - having already put a couple of hours labour into it - I'm pretty comfortable blaming the buyer, not the postal service

You don't need to physically visit a post office to get a shipping quote. All you need is scales and an internet connection. And you can store your rates in your seller settings, so that prospective buyers can check them before ordering.

I had stored rates for everything except LPs/12"s, because it could vary from $9 to $84.

Yes. In my experience prospective buyers can be absolute dicks about international postage quotes.

Never had any trouble with that. Some do balk at the price, but no one's ever been rude about it.

I've never had that problem either, although I do restrict international sales to the EU, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. But I've processed hundreds of international orders, and never once had a buyer take issue with the shipping charge.

Just started selling on Discogs, and have noticed an annoying trend of buyers not posting any feedback. I've tried putting a 'please leave feedback so I know it's arrived safely, etc' message in my 'Marked as Shipped' messages, and also a hand-written note inside packages. What's up with this?

the CEO of Australia's postal service raised his own salary to be ten times that of the Prime Minister in 2016. Postage prices did not remain stable between 2014 and 2017.

(when the above was revealed, after months of fighting FOI requests, he resigned and got an $11M payout.)

xpost re feedback: I've processed just over 1300 orders and had feedback left for just over 800, so that's a 61% response rate. Before I started, I "sold" one item to a friend who I'd asked to leave feedback, so that I could begin with a 100% score rather than "new seller" status.

advice please! i sold a record to someone in canada in february but it seems to have got lost in the mail somewhere (canadian customs office by the looks of things). i've just put in a claim for it with UK royal mail - would you folk issue a refund at this stage or should i wait until my claim has been processed? total cost inc postage was £65, royal mail say it could take up to 90 days for the claim to be processed.

Domestic shipping are troublesome enough getting claims filled -- i avoid "International" sales altogether. I would not issue any refund before the process finishes its due course. If you're worried about a poor rating from the buyer, i would recommend you stay in constant contact with them even if there is no further info to share -- and do the same with the claims dept as the 90-day deadline approaches.

Do you have any terms in your shipping rates, like untracked freight at buyers risk? Has the buyer requested a refund yet?

I've currently got a parcel sitting with a courier company because the buyer wasn't home to receive the goods but hasn't gone to pick it up. He's made no contact with me though so i'm not sure what's going on. It could even be a similar issue with the parcel being undelivered and then sitting with a local mail centre before slowly being redirected back to you.

Just started selling on Discogs, and have noticed an annoying trend of buyers not posting any feedback. I've tried putting a 'please leave feedback so I know it's arrived safely, etc' message in my 'Marked as Shipped' messages, and also a hand-written note inside packages. What's up with this?

― nerve_pylon, Sunday, March 25, 2018 1:30 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I do enough business both buying and selling that I only leave positive feedback if the seller does something beyond the call of duty: item arrives faster than expected, seller actually undergrades condition (this one's rare), was willing to bundle / accept an offer.

I don't leave buyers feedback unless they don't pay. The way I see it is: you bought something, you pay for it, I send it, end of transaction. You want a medal for paying for the thing you bought?

also, it's obnoxious getting pestered to leave feedback. Not saying you're doing this but I'll often see a message on Discogs related to an item I sold a month prior and think "uh oh, the package was lost," only to find the message is just some dude asking me to leave feedback. Granted, it's like two seconds out of my day, but it's still annoying.

it helps both you and them to leave reciprocal feedback. people are definitely WAY laxer on Discogs than on eBay though. which I'll attribute to eBay being a seething mass of humanity, but Discogs largely self-selecting for uptight nerds who are already there getting loads of tiny details correct for no rewards whatsoever.

thanks for the advice bodacious/micarl. not too worried about negative feedback, just feel a bitt bad for the buyer tbh. i shipped the record tracked & signed and i can see that it got as far as the aeroplane but then the trail goes cold - still no record of it at all on the canada post tracking site. i guess keeping in touch with them is the key for now, even if i basically have zero fresh news.

I've currently got a parcel sitting with a courier company because the buyer wasn't home to receive the goods but hasn't gone to pick it up. He's made no contact with me though so i'm not sure what's going on. It could even be a similar issue with the parcel being undelivered and then sitting with a local mail centre before slowly being redirected back to you.

lol i have had this happen before. someone paid me £12 to have a £3 record sent to them in germany. then they missed the delivery and never picked it up from the post collection place in the two weeks that it was held there. then it got flown all the way back here to me and it was only the day before it reached me again when they sent me a message to ask where it was :\

Not leaving feedback is a bit of a dick move imo. If everyone did that people would either have 0% or 100%.

Varg will be pleased
https://blog.discogs.com/en/top-30-most-expensive-items-sold-in-discogs-marketplace-for-february-2018/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=dashboard&utm_campaign=Top_30_2018_04_05

24. Burzum – Burzum
Sold for $1666.00
Label: Deathlike Silence Productions Format: LP, Album, RP Country: Norway Released: 1992
Genres: Rock Styles: Black Metal

xp this thread has prompted me to go and leave feedback for the buyer who bought a CD from me 2 weeks ago, they were a new user and had no feedback at all.

questions:

what do you call those arc-shaped wear lines around the grooves? you know those whitish marks - is there a shorthand name for those?

if a record has those but it plays just fine without any issues, what would you normally grade it at?

i hate them btw, they make a record look horrible and i normally avoid buying that shit

You mean where it's wear to the groove itself? We call that "groove wear," it's definitely worth mentioning (also worth mentioning that it sounds ok if it has it) but you'll probably lose some customers by being honest.

As for grading I don't know, maybe drop it a grade but mention "plays VG+" with specific mentions of times it doesn't.

VG+ or whatever

i think i've always thought that groove wear was more wear inside the groove rather than that abrasion you get on the tops of the groove if the cartridge has been rubbing on the record (oh the days of overloading the arm with pennies when i was a kid, oops). i guess it applies to both though?

abrasion you get on the tops of the groove if the cartridge has been rubbing on the record (oh the days of overloading the arm with pennies when i was a kid, oops)

I would specifically detail this in the listing.

haha maybe not! am not selling any of the terrible records i trashed as a teenager btw just to clarify, that stuff went in the bin years back

Btw today was a banner day for me on discogs cos I actually sold a herb alpert album. To someone in the US in fact - is there a shortage of herb over there or something?

That is hilarious. Herb Alpert records make up abt 40% of U.S. dollar bins

I figure they’ll refuse it entry at border control tbh

Was it the one with Janet Jackson? That song's a jam, but even so it's still a dollar bin LP.

no it was 'rise' from 1979 which is the one with this bad boy on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaeCdq--puk

the title track is pretty nice too imo, but i'm sure he could've bought a dozen copies of it for what he paid in postage

Fun thing about working in a record store is when I go to list new vinyl stuff and find that now it's becoming common for the median price for sealed copies to be $5-10 below our cost. So if you own a record store... just never have backstock on new vinyl. Or just don't deal in new vinyl at all. Bottom's dropping out imo.

do you think that's because people are selling at a loss, or are they getting the records for less somehow?

What kind of titles would be good examples?

Record store day exclusives, mainly

It's selling at a loss I'm 99% sure.

Yeah those RSD titles are prime deep discount territory tbh because everyone over-orders but we're also trying to unload some kind of generic record store fodder like Black Keys, Brian Jonestown Massacre, a lot of 2nd tier punk reissues... stuff where we can sell at cost if necessary but we're small and order on a scale where if we start cutting prices below cost it's going to hurt.

lol look at the sold history for the Elliott Smith "Heaven Adores You" soundtrack

https://i.imgur.com/wYf6rah.jpg

Back to the shelf with ye

(cost $23/list $35 btw)

but but but wait it gets worse those $7.13 listings are all from "collectors-choice" which is a shell account for alliance entertainment which is likely the one stop distributor that sold you guys the record for $23 wholesale in the first place

Collectors Choice have p good price and a very reasonable at shipping LPs to the UK IME

There's a lot of that happening: big distros like Alliance selling stuff on the internet at cost (or below, loss leader style) and undercutting the very people they're ostensibly distributing to. I suspect a lot of these high volume dealers you see selling new stock on eBay and Amazon--moviemars, rarewaves, importcds, etc--are these so-called shell accounts for (I assume) WEA, Red, UMG, etc. This is, of course, totally fucked up.

listings are all from "collectors-choice" which is a shell account for alliance entertainment which is likely the one stop distributor that sold you guys the record for $23 wholesale in the first place

Didn't even know they were connected. This game rotten as fuck, total stink-ass

A certain well-known Dylan bootleg box set seems to have circumvented the "no boots" policy by being filed under the artist's real name (also the name which appears on the box set).

xp pretty sure "siren records" is another front here in this example:

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/10518120?ev=rb

just bought the LP version of the "Smack My Crack" compilation. The cheapest copy in the US was $50 plus shipping. I got a copy shipped from Germany for $15 total. WTF, America?

I forget what the spoken word quotient is on that album, but maybe Germans are less keen on listening to poetry in English?

It's likely that when the US seller priced their copy, there were fewer listed and the $50 amount was comparable to the cost of the other listed copy + shipping from EU + a few bucks off the top to account for convenience of not having to wait 3 - 4 weeks to get the record in a flimsy fucking paper envelope that European sellers like to use.

To be fair, it's really only the British sellers that use those horrible paper envelopes, like that will protect the records. I specifically request stiff cardboard boxes now, otherwise you're going to pay for a NM copy of Sheila Take A Bow and it's going to show up with bent corners and you're going to sit there on the floor and run your finger over the crease and then start to reflect on every poor choice you've ever made in life.

the median Discogs price is $11.50

I repeat, WTF America

also I know y'all love to complain about European shipping (and I have seen some second hand horror stories) but I have never had any issues and Germans in particular seem to be great at packaging (lol, xpost, yes UK can be sketchy)

paper envelopes? nah mate, we’ve moved on from that

Wow. pic.twitter.com/mnY0WM7tPR

— michael tanner (@michaeljtanner) May 10, 2018

^^ that's the one I saw that I was referring to above

I only buy foreign from Germans. A lot of times the overseas postage from Germany (unlike any place else in Europe) is the same or only slightly more than having something shipped from any place inside the US. I don't know why that is, but I make the most of it!

Wow, I'd be super pissed if I ordered an original Fotheringay and it showed up like that. Truly WTF.

Wtf?

Just got an 8CD Louis Prima box set (the one on Bear Family, from '93) in today's mail. Old stock from a guy whose record store went out of business. Still in the shrink wrap, with a $189.98 price tag on it - I got it for $100 plus $3 media mail shipping from Florida.

one big gripe is sellers who use usps online stuff to generate a shipping label, which creates a tracking number, which they then post up for you to see and admire. record has not actually shipped, nor do i know when it will actually ship.

it wouldn't be such a gripe if i hadn't already waited 8 days for them to send the shipped notice along with the tracking # that's not actually tracking anything yet.

new beta feature where tracks on a release are listed as a link and you can see all the releases they've appeared on. I can see how it would be useful but, at the risk of being petty, it looks so ugly in blue text when the layout has always been so simple and minimalist

Does it actually track whether *that specific version* of a song (recording/mastering/mix etc.) has appeared on other releases?

"This release has been blocked from sale in the marketplace. It is not permitted to sell this item on Discogs."

Never seen that before.

Encountered it here.

is this where I mention the surprisingly persistent sense of guilt/shame I have that I forgot I'd placed a discogs order (I'm used to marketplaces that pay automatically), they (understandably) tanked my ranking, and now the marketplace is useless to me

"This release has been blocked from sale in the marketplace. It is not permitted to sell this item on Discogs."

Never seen that before.

Encountered it here.

― (V) (°,,,,°) (V) (Austin), Sunday, July 15, 2018 9:48 PM

Yeah, I've seen that come up a few times on bootleg releases.

xp katherine, I completely blanked on an order, messaged the seller apologizing and asked if they could let me follow through, and it all worked out ok? it was a few years ago and may have changed since then

I message polite reminders to non-paying buyers after 5 days, 10 days and on the final day (14), when I explain how their rankings will be affected, and ask them if they'd prefer just to cancel. More often than not, this yields results. That said, there's been a recent significant upswing in fully silent non-payers.

Yeah, Discogs started removing any non-official items from sale at a large scale around a year ago. Shame, but all part of them becoming more and more of a business.

Sellers are able to manually remove those automatic non-payer negative feedbacks FWIW. You could always try asking.

Yeah, I've removed a couple on request.

🖼

the only celtic(s) that has won anything meaningful tho

Yeah, Discogs started removing any non-official items from sale at a large scale around a year ago. Shame, but all part of them becoming more and more of a business.

Sorry for that cross post blip

ebay, xpost

I've seen sellers add comments to a bootleg's page saying that people can DM them for private sale. Obviously a risky strategy for both parties though – the seller might get blocked for trying to circumvent the no-boots policy, while the buyer loses protection if the deal takes place off the grid.

ebay, xpost

they're not very good blocks, though. I think they also rely on people reporting items, but we've repeatedly sold Dylan boots without a problem. Led Zeppelin otoh

Funny, I was just looking at a LZ1 LP turquoise lettering, 'reissue' ont'bay so I guess it depends.

Need some guidance here. . .

I ordered a CD through the Discogs marketplace and it was set up to have a fixed shipping price, so I was able to just immediately check out through PayPal right then. The amount cleared my PayPal account and a week went by with no communication from the seller. I looked at the order history on my Discogs account and the status was set to "Payment Pending" (which is where it still stands as of right now). I messaged the seller to ask about why it says that and they responded with, "Sorry I'm out of town, blah blah blah." Couple days pass and they respond again saying, "The payment does not show up on my end." I respond with the date it cleared my account and the email address to which it was sent. They respond pretty quickly this time saying, "Oh yeah, I see it now. Sending it out as soon as I can." Couple days go by, they message again saying, "I can't find the disc. Unless you want to wait, I'll just refund you." I respond with, "That's okay. If you can't find it, no big deal, I'll just take a refund." Another two days pass and they respond with, "I'm going to look again. I think I got the disc out when you ordered it and misplaced it. If you get a refund in the next couple days, I couldn't find it."

So now we're ten days from when the payment cleared. First they say they were out of town when the order was placed, then it was pulled out to prepare for mailing and misplaced. I asked for a refund and they respond with a very ambiguous answer. At this point, I don't even want the CD anymore. What should I do?

Dispute it with paypal if you can and leave feedback on discogs

How much was the transaction? If it was less than $20, including postage, I would say just forget about it and accept whatever the eventual outcome is. If it was some kind of expensive rarity, take it up with Discogs.

otm

There's very little Discogs can do unless the seller is not even replying. Yeah, dispute it on PayPal of you used it and want a refund.

I mean, it was around ten dollars. I wish I was at a point where I could just shine that off and say oh well. But that's just not the case.

give me your email i'll paypal you $10

Haha, you are the most solid of dudes!

I sent the seller a kind but firm message and they refunded me just now, so all's well. Glad it didn't escalate any further.

i have two gripes with discogs: 1) I never seem to get emails from them. I'm not like on there all the time looking at my message box. why don't they send those out via email? or maybe they're getting marked as spam? 2) they won't let you list bootlegs anymore for sale. wtf.

You may need to look into your account settings. Under some settings, they won't email you at all.

yeah you can get hella emails from them if you want. I created a list for every single project and appearance by the members of one Australian band, two of whom had an unreleased song covered on an album that also had a cover of Tangled Up In Blue, and discogs email me every goddamn day to tell me about every Bob Dylan pressing that someone adds somewhere in the world.

Dropping bootlegs for sale was annoying when I was trying to turn KLF CDs into orthodontic treatment last year, but "wtf" is surely the least inexplicable "w" ever.

I mean they don't email me bcz I switched it off, but ykwim

ah, perhaps that's why. I had several messages in there about things I had listed for sale from months ago that I didn't know about.

i received negative feedback from a seller for leaving them negative feedback without contacting them first. wtf? i appreciate you allowing me to send you back your garbage for a refund but it doesn't make me happy or anything.

it's just.. your grading sucks.. and it should be public knowledge

Retaliatory feedback is bullshit. I received a record in the mail packaged in wrapping paper. No box, nothing. Like, if somebody gave you a record for your birthday, that's what I got in the mail. It was all jacked up and I immediately left negative feedback and the seller retaliated with "BAD BUYER HAD BUYERS REMORSE DIDN'T WANT RECORD AND TOOK IT OUT ON ME."

I'm still mad about it.

you see people list stuff as mint then the description is like "missing disc two" and despair

Seems like there should be a reporting system for that kind of thing, so it doesn’t have to be handled thru feedback?

you see people list stuff as mint then the description is like "missing disc two" and despair

like, this is fine if they clearly state it? assuming that all the intact parts are mint. someone might have left disc 1 in a friend’s car in 1992 and want a good replacement

no

the gradings are built-in, the description is the only way to add qualifiers

tends to be best to only call sealed items mint imo, NM w/ a note would probably be fine if you had a missing CD but the remaining one had never been played

There is a reporting system (there's an arrow next to the listing I think,) but how to grade incomplete items isn't really defined. Mint is really pushing it though. It's kind of a mythical state of perfection even for new complete items.

yes yr all correct, I was thinking of the general principle not the specificity of “mint”!

Re negative feedback: when you bring up the "Leave Feedback" page, it says "Please communicate to try to resolve any problems before leaving feedback." As a seller, I'm grateful for that, as it gives me the chance to resolve a genuine mistake without incurring reputational damage. As a buyer, I do follow this guideline - so if a record is over-graded, I'll message the buyer and suggest a remedy. If the problem is then resolved, I'll then leave positive feedback, but I'll reference the problem in my comments, e.g. "disc was VG+ not NM, but the buyer resolved the problem quickly and amicably".

(duh, "the SELLER resolved the problem quickly and amicably")

Nope, sorry, I want to know if a seller overgrades. It should be public. Grading vinyl is not hard! If in doubt, grade down. I'm just done giving these clowns benefit of the doubt. It's happens to me way too often.

What else is feedback there for? Just straight up fraud?? No other negativity allowed?

I would never leave negative feedback without first contacting the Seller. I've had several issues with grading and packaging, and in every case they seller has refunded a fair amount.

The fact is that site staff can't be expected to mediate disputes sight unseen so all that's asked is that there's a chance to work thing out in case of a mistake made in good faith or a misunderstanding.

It doesn't preclude leaving feedback if you still feel that way, but you do have to contact the seller first.

i don't have to do anything.. i just don't like being lied to, or being sold garbage

I would leave negative retaliatory feedback if I received negative feedback from a buyer about item condition / grading without them contacting me to attempt to resolve it / refund / return. Also seems questionable to call out a single instance of overgrading like its a public service for some chronic over-grading problem. It could be a one-off, mistake, human error.

here's the thing: the problem isn't resolved when i return something or receive a partial refund (lol, again it's like paying to take someone's garbage from them). it's an inconvenience. a resolution to the "problem" would be for them to send me what i paid for and not making me send their garbage back to them.

just my 11 cents!!!

xp it happens all the time to me, plus these are usually record shops that should really know better

hm yeah if it is record shops that is a bit more suspect.

i don't have to do anything.. i just don't like being lied to, or being sold garbage

Of course. But if the seller requests a review there's a very good chance the feedback will be removed if you don't make contact first.

As I said, it doesn't preclude feedback. There's no obligation, it's so that there is a chance of a resolution where possible.

this was eBay but i had a guy win a bid for an album and then he completely ghosted, just never paid me. After a couple months i left negative feedback and he left negative feedback for me, saying not only had he paid but he had the record in his possession. like he was trying to "Robert Blake in Lost Highway" me via an Underworld 12".

weird thing is the guy had positive feedback, 100%, a couple hundred transactions' worth. but after that one with me there were a few more left on his page with the same issue. must have lost his mind.

Recently I bought a new CD from a shop on eBay that turned out to be a CDr, as well as the digipak being damaged in the post - it did have a tire mark on it but too many people seem to think a padded envelope is adequate.

I wanted to contact them but ended up starting the return process automatically so I guess they just got charged straight away for tracked return post. Not quite my intention initially although I wasn't happy with it, especially as I have the release on Bandcamp anyway.

Not sure if there's a point to this tale.

Here's how i break it down

M - doesn't exist but I guess you can use this for new things
NM - the best
VG+ - would be NM apart from a couple minor things
VG - average. There's a wide spectrum of subconditioning within the VG realm. Very dangerous.
G - beat up
F - worthless
P - worthless

If something is missing a disc there is no way in hell it can be mint near mint very good. Maybe good?

Half the media is gone. If I cut the cover in half and throw half of it away, I'm not going to say that the remaining half is mint. That's crazy.

M - sealed
NM - no marks, no sound issues
VG+ - marks, but no sound issues
VG - sound issues that don't overwhelm
G+ - sound issues that overwhelm
F/P - jumps, sticks, cracked, warp that affects play etc etc

When listing a VG or G+ for sale, I always describe the sound issues in detail. Sometimes a VG will just have a bit of brief, light intro crackle.

I bought an original UK MC5 "Kick out the jams" recently, it was listed as P. (poor) but I thought hey...

Anyway, yeah it's worn and the sleeve is well worn, but not torn and the LP plays well, bit crackly but hey.. Or indeed ramalama..

Anyway, I sell a fair bit on Discogs, most are listed as vg+, I'm not checking every LP and CD

I do check before sending, if I'm in doubt about the condition or the version. I get a few that say no I wanted 'that' version so I refund. Most say they don't mind.

Condition is all in the eye of the beholder...

M = "still shrink wrapped"
NM = "if I bought this new in a shop, I would be OK with it"

VG+ = Yeah, owned clearly but no visible damage and a minor LP markings it's seen oxygen.

VG covers a multitude of sins but it depends on the music...

yeah I've def taken a punt before on things the seller presumably considered effectively unplayable and found them to be basically OK

I play-grade every record I sell, before listing it. Not all the way through, but always at the start of each side (the biggest danger zone), then a few places in the middle, plus if a mark looks significant then I'll play that section as well. With CDs, it's much the same. I'm also rigorous about listing the correct version. It takes longer, but it's helped to keep my feedback at 100% positive, after 1800+ orders in the last two years. Considering how much of my monthly income comes from Discogs sales, that feels like time well spent; even if I dipped to 99.9%, I'd lose out on some orders. (As a buyer, I've had so many over-gradings that I'll now only purchase from 100% sellers, and I suspect many others do the same.)

I doubt you lose out on some orders, and in truth we'll never know

I play-grade every record I sell, before listing it. Not all the way through, but always at the start of each side (the biggest danger zone), then a few places in the middle, plus if a mark looks significant then I'll play that section as well.

Hats off to you! I've been back on a vinyl kick for the past several months, and in addition to hitting up local shops and record shows, I spend a bit of time comparison shopping online. With vinyl being the hot thing right now, I can't begin to tell you how many merchants on Ebay mention something along the lines of "I don't own a record player, so I sight grade only etc."--and not all of 'em are weekend warrior types selling off inherited collections. Would it seriously put them out too much to go pick up at least a Crosley or other, better, entry-level players to spot check for skips and hiss on?

Can you call a NM album if it has "only been played on a Crossley"?

I think that's an instant P tbh

I've been doing a discogs store for the last couple of months as a bit of a lark and a way to extend record collecting as a hobby, and it's been a blast. I'm very, very small scale - just shy of 300 listings, but proud of my 100% positive feedback. Anyway, I get an inquiry from a guy who wants me to listen to 3 of my listed LPs (VG+ all) and tell him if they've got surface noise, with the enticement that if they're quiet enough he's interested in buying a bunch more from me. Because I've got the day off, I listen to all 3 through, report back that these VG+ records have just as many light bits of noise as you'd expect them to... ie, they sound good and within the realm of the condition listed. He writes me back and tells me they're "not clean enough for us". I look him up and he's one of these sellers that go after the Steve Hoffman Red Hot Stampers crowd, and he's looking to turn my $5 MJQ record into a $250 boutique item. Anyway, good riddance.

Aside from that everyone I've sold to has been super cool and excited to get the stuff I send to them. I doubt I'll ever make money off it, but it's a lot of fun.

https://blog.discogs.com/en/10-expensive-post-rock-records/

is this a new thing or part of a series which I've just noticed now (appeared top right of my homepage)

writing has a proper work experience kid feel to it and all the TOP PRICES are in fact dickhead chancers listing records at several times the actual going rate, why give them any credence

Yeah, the "Earth 2" cassette promo, listed at £190, top price actually sold at £45

Yeah seems to be Discogs trying to hype up the value of releases by about 1000%. For comparison, I just sold a copy of that Swans Love Of Life box for £40 on Ebay, admittedly not with the poster or extra LP. And the guy trying to sell it on Discogs for £400 is based in Russia. Not that that makes it automatically dodgy. Actually, yes it does.

They're a funny bunch sometimes, but the lack of public facing slickness, the slight ineptitude, it's kind of reassuring in a way. They still seem to genuinely care about the database mission despite the marketplace presumably generating the vast proportion of income. The guy that owns it has probably done unexpectedly well out of it and doesn't seem to have got greedy.

Possibly that sounds a bit condescending.

I guess you lot would like it if they hired some writers, which is fair enough.

I think they hired a PR firm to help them out a while back, hence the blogging/promo stuff.

I have sold and bought from/to Russia, its been fine.

“I hope the Russians grade their vinyl too”

as of right now it's a very useful and friendly site, which you can't say about many monetized internet sites that have been around as long.

forums are full of absolute mentalists arguing in third languages, but most of them are arguing towards the same principles so it tends to be Highly Fraught but not actually aggressive

oh i've never touched the forms, perhaps that explains why i'm so sanguine about the site. i'm not sure i even knew there were forums?

vinyl hospital group might be useful but idk people have weird ideas

Be prepared for strong opinions about mould variants.

forums are full of absolute mentalists arguing in third languages, but most of them are arguing towards the same principles so it tends to be Highly Fraught but not actually aggressive

board description etc

Since when have Swans been post-rock? And Earth?

And even Slint. They are on every post rock best of list, but surely they are "just" rock? Riffs and hooks. Kinetic energy.

Just started using this. How long is it normal to wait for sellers to add the shipping information?

day or 2 usually

If it goes a week without hearing anything about shipping I'll send the seller a message to remind/ask what's up.

Cool. I'm not anxious about it or anything. Just wanted to get the general vibe of how long it is before someone is dicking around.

So I bought a record off discogs a few weeks back, paid via paypal straight away, but it still says "payment pending", even though the money has left my paypal account. i've contacted the seller twice about this and they've not replied - they have 100% approval as a seller tho. i'm guessing they're possibly just away or not checking messages, but i'm not sure what to do next. i've found the seller on discogs - he even has his discogs page on his bio - is it crepey to contact him via that? tho he doesn't seem v active there, either. i just don't want to take it to making complaint or getting paypal refund if it can be solved a better way.

Where are you shipping to/from?

from UK to Uk - literally, it seems, a couple of miles up the road

did you mean to say Facebook or something? otherwise, you found the discogs seller's discogs page, well top sleuthing there ;)

if it's been a few weeks I'd message them wherever (tbh I'd've probably raised a Paypal dispute by that time if they're not responding on discogs)

Ha! Yes, sorry, found them on Twitter. Will hit 'em up via there.

Have you checked the seller's terms? There may be something at the top, along the lines of "I'm away on holiday for two weeks"...

Only seller's terms are "Orders will be cancelled if payment is not received within 7 days." Hollow laugh.

Sounds like a lapsed seller- I’ve seen some people who have great ratings up to a point and then they just crash.

You definitely should have had some follow up by now. Good luck my friend

I had a 19 day wait from a low volume seller (been on there for years but only sold a handful of things). He'd gotten logged out so he wasn't getting notifications or some such, but when he logged back in and he had a paid order waiting he apologized profusely and everything went smoothly from there.

I have an order from 2017 still listed as "Payment Pending" and I got the LP in a timely manner. I think it's just the seller didn't update the status.

Yeah that would be my guess, I'd just ask for tracking

i very occasionally sell on discogs and i've found their notifications of some things hit and miss, as in, I didn't always get emails about things. the message would be in discogs if I logged in and looked, but if I'm not paying particular attention I could miss something for weeks.

I always get all of mine by email - minus the types that I've opted out of (mostly database notifications) - but if a buyer isn't responding to messages, I'll double up with a direct email to them - it often does the trick.

I just sold a record for £1*, packed it in a decent mailer with bubblewrap and a stiffener (and a new inner sleeve) and shipped it for next day delivery. Now *that's* service, if I do say so myself ;-)

* yes not really worth it, but the lower value items often help sweeeten bigger deals as add ons. Although they do now allow sellers to stipulate minimum order requirements.

That's commendable. I sent a Photek CD to Japan the other day, price £3. I wonder whether it's really worth it sometimes but would agree with your disclaimer.

I'm down to the dregs now so pretty much all mine are 50p-£1.99. so yeah is it worth me walking into town to post it? probably not. what I really need to do is list more stuff, because yeah then those 50p items get added onto other orders.

every now and then i take all my £1.50 and less stuff (most of which i can't be bothered listing in the first place) and stick it all on ebay as a job lot (sometimes split into genres). good for shifting bulk and clearing space and saves you umpteen trips to the post office for negligible returns

last lot I sold that way was to some guy who had a holiday cottage and was filling it with vinyl as his USP. bought about 150 records of very questionable quality, mostly dodgy euro rave, shit techno and the arse end of disco. think I got about 80 quid?

Do you bother fully itemising them or just a vague description and hope it sounds enticing?

Laid them all out on the sitting room floor 16 at a time and took photos

lol, after all the excitement of making my first discogs marketplace order, the guy cancelled because he apparently no longer had the item in his shop. Fortunately, it's not a super rare record and I'm trying again. But it was only released in Europe, so most sellers are in Germany/Austria.

Would think you'd link up databases or something so if an item was old online it would be removed from sale in the shop. Or at least a reminder to remove it from the shelves came through.
Though probably going to find some lag between sales and removal anyway since staff likely to be busy and not 100% on top of things.
Not seen the set up with something like this, do things tend to be sold in 2 media at the same time or kept aside for online sales and not put out for rack sales. Otherwise likely to be some confusion innit.

It happened to me on Reverb LP a couple weeks ago too. A guy cancelled my sale and sent the message "Sorry, that already sold on my Discogs page." I'd started record buying on Reverb since I've been using it to buy and sell musical instruments and equipment for many years without too many problems. So my initial impression is that record collectors are just flakier than guitar players.

more objects to keep track of, by and large, I suppose

valid point.

xp Arse End of Disco B&B? I'd book it.

Admin for shops has to be a pain. Do they offer any sort of API you can begin to hook up to your own shop's database?

As a buyer I try not to get too miffed about frustrations related to discogs/ebay purchasing bc I try to remember that its just humans on the other end who by & large have the same distractions & limitations as me w/r/t going to the post office & keeping track of shit & whatever.

That being said the one thing that still gets me v v annoyed is when sellers tell me they already sold something. Seems to happen to me maybe 1 out of 20 orders and is almost always a case where I pay & then dont hear anything back for a week or two, have to ping them w/one or two reminders, and eventually get the message back "sorry, I've been looking for this everywhere & can't find it, I guess I sold it elsewhere, shrug". Drives me nuts.

I run listings on discogs and reverb lp, as I've found that buyers don't really overlap: discogs buyers tend to be people searching for specific stuff, whereas the reverb buyers tend to just be more curious about buying LPs... at least as far as I can glean. Anyway, I'm always terrified of having to tell someone that I don't have the item I say I have, so I watch it like a hawk. My inventory isn't especially big, so it's manageable. The one time it happened the buyer blew it off, which I appreciated. I'm sure it's much more difficult for sellers with thousands of items and many daily sales.

I have thousands of items and many daily sales, and logging the stock's dead easy - I have my spreadsheet open 24/7 (saved to Dropbox), and moving items from the "for sale" section to the "sold" section is literally the first thing I do after receiving a payment.

can discogs be linked up to that spreadsheet, or is that a manual step afterwards?

Going to start listing some more.

You can export your Discogs collection as a csv, update it locally, then upload the changed version.

just a shout that it's extremely easy to port your entire discogs inventory over to reverb LP, and well worth it IMO. My sales have more or less doubled since running on both platforms

xp - I update my spreadsheet manually. I've tried the csv export, but didn't find much use for it.

Is frequent updating the reason things fall out of my cart (Discogs) every few days from certain sellers? The items are almost never sold and I just add them back to buy on a rainy day. I'm just wondering why that happens.

Are you adding them to your cart or your wantlist?

Cart.