Shady scams and other silly business ideas to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors

Lol

"I smell something fishy, and I'm not talking about the contents of Baldrick's apple crumble."

i checked in with VYNL to see how they were doing. they might as well be hyping fictional records. i scrolled down awhile and didn't find anyone i'd heard about and i'm guessing there aren't modern era private press classic jams in there. maybe i'm just being harsh.

https://www.instagram.com/getvnyl/

separately, the used record market is shit today (as a buyer, in brick and mortar joints) -- i hate going into a promising-appearing new shop and then it quickly dawning on me that it's just another experience in price-gouging. in the area of L.A. i now live, there isn't a really great store within 45 minutes.

yeah whenever i check out a new-to-me store I'm either browsing at great length, or finding out immediately it's one of THOSE places.

tbf, not so different from the days when what I'd be quickly ruling out was some dusty old warehouse packed high with shredded old unwanted 70s junk, laid flat and piled high in no order whatsoever, with no prices in anything so even if you found something cool, it would be a ripoff once you brought it up for a quote.

I don't vinyl shop, but a new boutique-y shop just opened down the street (in my corner of the L.A. area), and I could tell just by glancing in the window what it was likely all about...

it must be a great time to buy CDs tho

Finding shops with an even half-way decent selection of CDs is getting really tricky IME. The vinyl caves never went away but the CD versions mostly have.

Yeah, any store with a decent CD selection seems to be anticipating the CD revival by a few years. The bargains are all on Craigslist or at flea markets.

TBF, why would you give over a lot of shelf space to something you’re selling for a buck or 2?

A lot of the fun has gone out of vinyl shopping for me bcuz the chance of me finding something I still need at a price I’m willing to pay is increasingly slim.

Well lots of record stores used to have quite interesting £1 / $1 bins, as the existence of the “I’d buy that for a dollar” thread shows. You’d think a stack of three quid CDs might do the same kind of job.

It’s definitely true that a pile of slightly beaten up CDs in jewel cases is a less exciting prospect than a stack of scuffed LPs, even when I’ve stopped buying vinyl completely.

I'm nostalgic for those days too but the truth is I rarely found anything exciting in those bins. I always think some random collection is gonna have something real exciting in it like, I dunno, Van der Graaf Generator or OMD, when the truth is it's usually just endless amounts of religious records and Bob Seger. even in the days when you could get great bargains the records themselves would wind up being so wrecked that they weren't even worth the $2 you paid

Yeah, I never bother with bargain bins for that reason. There's one at a place near where I live, and luckily it takes like ten seconds to glance at all the spines. Always the most random and worthless assortment of discs. With a lot of the I think "who even bought these titles to begin with?"

I used to find interesting records in those bins all the time, though they definitely got worse with the coming of the internet and (I would guess) business conditions getting more difficult for record store owners over the 90s and 00s, meaning they couldn't afford to chuck gems from outside their wheelhouse into the quid bins. The "I'd buy that for a dollar" thread really does have a ton of great stuff in it that people have found!

My interest in 70s country music definitely grew through the 00s as it became basically the only genre I liked where you could find really good stuff on the very cheap.

I'm sure it's possible, just not in my neck of the woods. Though we did have a guy who is slowly selling off a collection which includes a bunch of records by Pere Ubu, The Residents, Univers Zero, and all other sorts of weird art prog stuff. bit more expensive than a dollar though.

I was visiting Akron the other day and found a James Ferraro record - not one I particularly liked but I had to buy it anyway, cuz when else you gonna come across something like that???

I'm not sure it is possible any more FWIW. That is to say, I don't see the good stuff any longer, it's probably a decade since I had good luck in your neck of the woods.

Still a stack of misted or dirty jewel cases is even less attractive!

Honestly it’s sort of an experience sometimes I dread, going into some of these new stores. A lot of them tend to traffick in not-great copies of obscurities they’re desperately trying to make happen, or well-known albums that are exorbitantly priced.

The stores that seem to be the most fair and also have high QC are run by the older dudes, who might be more actively annoying sometimes but they take a little more pride in their ability to find good copies and filter out the beaters, places where they’re definitely not letting much slip by into the bargain pile but you’re also not going to only find late ‘70s Rod Stewart or Linda Ronstadt if your budget is under $20. Price gouging spots seem to be run by younger folks. At least that’s my experience in Los Angeles.

I have never thought about the economics of a used vinyl shop but they can't be very good. Anyone know what the COGS on a typical ~$20 record on Amazon are? I'd imagine these shops have to put a pretty significant amount of capital upfront and rely on ~20% of the store to turn regularly, while ~80% just sits there for ages. Not to say price gouging is justified but the older dudes are probably sitting on mountains of records at home and decide it's finally time to cut bait, and maybe the younger folks are more so trying to start from square 1?

scott seward to thread!

the biggest record store within twenty minutes of where i live started as a used CD/DVD shop, and then they switched to an equal amount of space devoted to vinyl. and their new prices are very good, but their used prices are pretty appalling. peeped a copy of last date by emmylou harris, $18. i use emmylou as my baseline, her records are classics but should be just a few bucks a pop. and last date should probably be less than that...

great CD and DVD prices though!

I don't see anything in stores for under $20 these days except 1) Errol Garner's Under the Sea; 2) as was pointed out by Tim, classic country, but even that is creeping up; and 3) records that are near unplayable.

Jesus. Glad I still live in a town where Emmylou records are $5.

I mean great copies of say Fleetwood Mac S/T that I used to see for under $10 even 3-4 years ago are now $20.

well Fleetwood Mack kinda has its own reason for jumping way up in price

I sold one for $12 last Sunday, I swear if I had an entire bin of those they would all sell

kept my Mofi version even though it's only VG

there's definitely an art to stocking a compelling bargain bin. there are definitely some proprietors who seem unaware that tons of records are not good enough even for the dollar section.

There used to be a used bookstore around here that sold books "by the pound" for awhile, with the intention that you could get paperbacks really cheap. I went in one time and they had a bunch of very cool looking architecture books, all hardcover, but they still tried to sell them by weight and it was going to end up extremely expensive! Luckily they canned that approach as they expanded their wares, though not enough since they aren't in business anymore.

Anyway, they did have a section with used CDs and I have never in my life seen a more dregs of the dregs bargain bin. I mean, just absolutely awful stuff. They clearly took anything to fill up these shelves. Without exaggeration, maybe less than 10% were actually music CDs and those that were were the worst freebie giveaways you could imagine. The rest of the discs were like 10-15 year old CD-ROMs of the worst software imaginable. It was just the most depressing shelf I've ever seen.

The record store that is two blocks from me is run by a 16 yo kid and he has just insane prices. Brand new sealed Fela Kuti reissues for $50 like he found some OG copy when you can order them online for $25.

lotta rich people need hobbies

One can still regularly find certain artists for cheap. Most Sinatra, Willie Nelson, and—despite that one store—Ronstadt and Emmylou. And there are still entire genres or subgenres which are overlooked, mid-century pop instrumental type shit like George Shearing or that late 70s-late 80s unhip jazz stuff. For example one can definitely stock up on the entire George Benson or earl Klugh discographies for pretty cheap. But I assume those days are coming to a close at some point.

Gordon Lightfoot and Moody Blues are two other examples of that, lotta great records can be had there for $5 or under. though it is weirdly hard to find a good, clean copy. they may be undesirable now but they certainly played the shit outta those records back in the day.

The record store that is two blocks from me is run by a 16 yo kid and he has just insane prices. Brand new sealed Fela Kuti reissues for $50 like he found some OG copy when you can order them online for $25.

I mean, if there was a record store two blocks from my house this would probably be a good thing, at least in terms of my wallet.

I know - they are losing so much money from me!

CTI was my last really good niche deal. I found nearly every one mentioned in the ILX thread in pretty much perfect condition for fairly cheap.

One can still find some CTI for pretty cheap, but it’s probably confined to deodato or benson

yeah 50s-70s country seems to be the cheapo-bin genre that still provides the best value for money. people seem just resolutely determined not to ever find that kind of stuff hip and the prices remain low while all sorts of other stuff climbs

here in Sydney I still have the occasional cheapie bin / charity shop win (think I detailed an absolutely ridic jazz haul in another thread) - but yeah so bored with stores that are selling average copies of the (average) OG pressing of The Head On The Door for AUD$85 - or shops run by people who clearly hate music but meticulously price everything at the most optimistic discogs price (often regardless of condition)

have definitely felt my vinyl-buying ardour cooling this year as it shifts definitely away from being a fun flea market scrounging hobby

As recently as 5 years ago my local shop still had not really discovered discogs as a pricing tool so I made out with tons of deals vs. actual going rate.

i hate places that base prices on what ppl are asking online vs. how much things are actually selling for

ok yes there is one mint copy for $100 up there but three used vg/nm copies sold this year for $20 each sooooooo

anyway if i owned a record store (and thank god i don't) i would take the advice of the ilxor (forget who it was, probably seward?) who said a record store should be a river not a lake. that seems to be the approach of the spots around here that have been open 20, 30, 40 years selling primarily vinyl. spots that open up and are just expensive reissues or used records on a high shelf for absurd prices don't seem to last too long

Yeah I mean when I go into one of these new stores and I see the elevated price points, I might give them one more chance a little bit down the road but usually I don’t even bother returning. Once I find a spot where the prices are pretty reasonable and they take care of their product (atomic records in the valley, for one) I’ll always go back. Even if things are more expensive now at least I know it’s going to be a good copy and they take pride in it. It’s not just some nouveau pandemic era lifestyle vinyl store.

key thread on this topic (including, unsurprisingly, many good scott posts): the pathos of unsold stock

COGS varies quite a bit. You’d think paying $1 for a record you can turn around for $5 or $8 would be a path to riches, but usually the reason it’s a cheap record is there’s not much demand. If you want to buy what people want to own - which is more and more just high points these days (meaning a precipitously steep dropoff in demand between Toto IV or Rumours or Private Eyes and the rest of the artist’s catalogue), just like what happened with the modern first editions bubble in the 90s before it burst - you gotta pay through the nose because everyone has access to Discogs and eBay and even kijiji and Craigslist. I recently offered a guy 50% of my projected gross (before labour, inner & outer sleeves, vig and overhead) for a decent collection of audiophile LPs in not-NM shape & he was like “nah, I guess I’ll try to sell them myself.” Ok cool but … that’s one of the reasons it’s tough to find great stuff in stores.

I price every copy of Rumours or Tom Waits or Never Mind the Bollocks or Cure records somewhat aspirationally and they never last 24 hours on the shelf whereas excellent but lesser known stuff priced competitively just sits there. I kinda feel like the future is every record will be either $500 or $1, nothing in between.

One store in my town (out of 10 total) still has a pretty good dollar bin. Found a Chris Ducey LP there recently, owner was like “I know what it is, but I don’t want it hanging around forever waiting for the one person in town who wants to pay what it’s worth.” So of course I’m a customer for life. And I also feel like there’s a lesson there re: How To Do It Right.

exactly. I had a great show sale last Sunday. I priced a 1st ed no-bar-code Milo Goes To College at 85, this adorable tatted up Socal skinhead tough guy wanted it so bad and I was like "make an offer, I actually want to sell this stuff". He asked "what's the lowest you'll go" and I said 60. We shook hands, everybody went away happy. Win-win.

my other favorite moment was giving away a $10 Jesus & Mary Chain LP (Barbed Wire Kisses) to someone because they would have had to go to the ATM for cash, it made their day.

n.b. both of these things happened later in the day when I was ready to haggle, also sold Warr3n H!ll $300 worth of wild shit for $200, he might flip some at his shop or online but it's more than I would get without dealing with an online sale to a stranger and the time/hassle of packaging and post office.

kinda feel like the future is every record will be either $500 or $1, nothing in between

this is the natural side effect of all the “earnest new collectors”, yeah? when i’m hanging out in the record shop seems like 90% of ppl coming through are asking for “the basics” in any genre, whether that’s well-known blue notes, or bowie records, aphex twin, frank ocean, outkast, whatever.

i am constantly digging up amazing rare late 90s / early 00s deep house 12s in bins for $5-10. ok they’re not moodymann singles, so what they’re great! but i feel like i’m probably the one person even bothering to dig in those bins on any given day

i am constantly digging up amazing rare late 90s / early 00s deep house 12s in bins for $5-10

there are some good contrasts here in the UK between (for example) Flashback Records in North London which has excellent stock and turnover but prices everything bang on the Discogs median price point, and smaller operators like (for example) King Bee Records on Manchester or The Little Record Shop in Crouch End which price "to sell" and specialise in reggae and soul in the former case and jazz in the latter. I guess the smaller stores have to differentiate themselves on price otherwise they have no chance, but you can still find some gems at less-than-internet prices.

I price every copy of Rumours or Tom Waits or Never Mind the Bollocks or Cure records somewhat aspirationally and they never last 24 hours on the shelf whereas excellent but lesser known stuff priced competitively just sits there. I kinda feel like the future is every record will be either $500 or $1, nothing in between.

boy this tracks and :\

when i’m hanging out in the record shop seems like 90% of ppl coming through are asking for “the basics” in any genre, whether that’s well-known blue notes, or bowie records, aphex twin, frank ocean, outkast, whatever.

i am constantly digging up amazing rare late 90s / early 00s deep house 12s in bins for $5-10. ok they’re not moodymann singles, so what they’re great!

just had this conversation with a young dude who works at my local shop, who was picking my brain a big and treating me like an "old head" (which, not crazy about that but w/e) -- but was trying to tell him the main reason i've had fun being a record collector over the decades is that i've always found myself collecting things that weren't highly sought after at the time, things that you can actually, y'know, COLLECT. giving yourself permission to follow your taste wherever it leads, getting records bc youre curious about them not bc you already think theyre great, etc

As someone who loves excellent but lesser known stuff I wish that philosophy was more prevalent but turns out most people price everything "aspirationally" and stubbornly hold out until someone desperate, reckless, dumb or rich enough comes along.

xp