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

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

dumb in this case unsympathetic shorthand for someone who doesn't have any idea how to research actual market rate for the record in question; assumes the price on the sticker = "what it goes for", which is peak earnest new vinyl collector naïveté. We've probably all been there at one point but there's way less excuses in this day and age of access to resources for information on the magic pocket computer.

You know as shoppers we find less deals because shops pay attention to market rate, but it's sort of ironic that so many shops will price above it anyway - I guess they don't care that the savvy customers might be put off by the obvious over pricing because non-savvy ones might pay it. Both sides of the sale have the same real time information at their fingertips.

It's just, the benefit to pricing niche stuff more fairly is that it has that much more of a chance of moving despite being less known, and its audience is that much more likely to be geeky and knowledgable about what the fair price should be.

how many “earnest new vinyl buyers” listen to vinyl/own a turntable anyways, I don’t think i want to know. I know there’s some of you on this board!!

I guess they don't care that the savvy customers might be put off by the obvious over pricing because non-savvy ones might pay it.

Yeah I mean this is it, there’s just so many people willing to pay extra/feel like they have to pay a premium to get a quality product, see also monster cables

I stopped going to this one really stupid expensive boutiquey store when the clerk did a stupid salesperson routine to get me to buy one of their expensive blue note tone poet reissues… the quoted $20 for an unpriced copy of Michael Franks’ birchfield nines.. Just truly wretched behavior.

brazen

I’m just really glad I collected the bulk of my records in the 1995-2015 era when used product wasn’t just reasonable but sometimes (from the current perspective) a total steal. I On the Beach by Neil Young: I picked up a NM copy for $3 at a used shop. Found another green world for $5 at the same place. Exile on main st for $6. Let it Be by the replacements for $5. This was in ‘98 or something. Just a great time to be alive. I have a couple newer-to-the-game pals and I try to explain to them how back then everything was under $10 (except the Beatles prob).

Michael franks for $20 is some sub-VNYL level shit!

As a totally materialistic geek myself I'm still a sucker for it, trying to navigate sensible recalibration of pricing expectations, but I miss the glory days as well. And I'm haunted by all the deals I passed on that are impossible to encounter again at this point.

Taking out my rough trade galaxie 500 LPs and seeing the $6 sticker on the label makes my eyes misty.

My original copy of Dino Jr's Bug that I paid $15 for has an earlier PREX sticker that says $5.99.

$6 then $60 now

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.

― omar little, Thursday, November 17, 2022 10:28 AM (yesterday)

yeah, this is almost always my experience too, sifting through the “used” section just to see the same artists every week, usually multiple copies of the same record, for $20-$30 apiece. I get it’s just a way to milk the naive to keep the lights on, but it’s sad. I find I have the best luck these days at actual thrift stores

I have a problem with the whole notion of market price: you're a local record store, selling to local buyers. Discogs is a global marketplace. A rare record with a limited audience might be worth big $ on discogs, but not to the subset of folks that are your customers (see pathos of unsold stock above). Other records I'm fine paying above Discogs because they are plentiful on the broader market, but I'm happy to buy it here and see the condition (and support the shop). Shops that don't get this, I don't bother with. Too many prices are just crazy (just bought collection insurance for the first time because of the #s Discogs tells me).

just bought collection insurance for the first time

what's involved in this? is it like a clause you add to an existing homeowner policy? I own instead of renting so I am curious.

There's a local shop notorious for this Discogs pricing shit, it drives me insane, but there must be just enough suckers collectors coming around to keep it in business year after year after year. I've heard that he's actually competitive when it comes to super expensive, highly collectible one offs, but most of the shop is like $50 copies of Rumours and shit like that.

It says something that I've lived within a few miles of this place for fourteen years and have only ever bought two items, CDs of the Cosmic Jokers and Krokodil, which were actually decently priced at the time.

damn, seeing all this makes me happy that the only record store I've shopped at for the past year has been an old established one that still prices things reasonably for the most part (Princeton Record Exchange aka the aforemntioned PREX). They are the big dog in this area/state so they get an absurd volume coming through and they throw out some weirdly underpriced crumbs fairly regularly. I've picked up perfectly playable copies with minor sleeve damage of Aladdin Sane, There's a Riot Going On, and Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome from their dollar bin and I got Soon Over Babaluma for 8 bucks among other deals. They will still throw out some stupidly overpriced shit from time to time but by keeping some random good deals sprinkled in there, I think they do a good job of splitting the difference.

xps took a lot of looking. homeowners policies exclude things like record collections. I only have a fraction of my collection on Discogs, and most inusurers require full inventories. and then some will only cover you if you bundle other policies (which I didn't have as a renter now and no car). went with C0llect!bles !nsurance S3rvices, and then documented with video and photos to supplement my Discogs inventory. don't know how worthwhile/able to collect if something catastrophic were to happen, but needed some peace of mind with an unplanned move (and, again, the insane $ figures these days).

(coverage also includes musical gear and books, which are a little easier to document. entry on Discogs has gotten much better, but still maddening to spend 20 minutes figuring out what pressing you have of some omnipresent $3 record (as much as those still exist))

thanks! fortunately I've done all the Discogs entry work already

also, I fucking love Krokodil

I agree I've had some good luck at PREX myself and I love going. There's a newer shop up north here that is pretty good too called Station 1, if you're ever in the area.

yeah, this is almost always my experience too, sifting through the “used” section just to see the same artists every week, usually multiple copies of the same record, for $20-$30 apiece. I get it’s just a way to milk the naive to keep the lights on, but it’s sad. I find I have the best luck these days at actual thrift stores

― k3vin k., Friday, November 18, 2022 8:43 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

many of these stores have an instagram where they'll hype their fresh used stock w/a video and i always try to "freeze...enhance..." so i can check the price tags and see if it's worth the trip. it's helped me avoid places a few times. lots of people are naive about pricing though, i feel like a downer when i see folks reviewing the places very happy with their overpriced purchases, or talk to friends who enthuse about places which i know are bullshit in that regard.

Amoeba Hollywood is actually still pretty damn good for a lot of things, tho since their move they just seem to carry less lower-priced used product these days in some areas.

Probably my best ever haul, $1 each in 2003, vinyl lined up on the sidewalk on 4th Ave in Brooklyn:

Same side of the street today:
Aural Exciters - "My Boy Lollipop / Paradise"
Computer - "Come and Dance"
Love Robot
Beatmaster - "Lip Service"
Digital Boy - "This is Mutha F**ker"
Cheyne - "Call Me 'Mr Telephone'"
Rori - "Wild Girls"
Ave Maria - "No Sex Until Marriage"
Stars on Long Play II
Royalle Delight - "I'll Be a Freak for You"
X Factor - "Chemical Romance"
Madhouse - 8
Montreal Sound - "Music"
Colour Box - "Breakdown / Tarantula"
Devo - "Peekaboo"
Sparks - "Beat the Clock / Tryouts for the Human Race"
Janice Christie - "Heat Stroke"
Norma Jean - "Saturday"
Cerrone - "Supernature"
Badazz - "Honk Honk Beep Beep / Hot Box (You Gotta Get Hot)"
Sly and Robbie - "Boops / Don't Stop the Music"
NV - "Let Me Do You"
X - "Wild Thing (Long Version)"

Wonderful surprises and Bargains at flea markets

one of my happy collecting memories is a friend 15 years ago who bought a collection and was sifting out the junk, and handed me a stack of all the 60s Gabor Szabo records incl multiple NM copies of Dreams, with the phrase "i know you like this kind of dollar-bin lounge crap, right? here."

how many “earnest new vinyl buyers” listen to vinyl/own a turntable anyways, I don’t think i want to know. I know there’s some of you on this board!!

― lets hear some blues on those synths (brimstead), Friday, November 18, 2022 8:16 AM

so this is funny. i recently got vg+ copies of two impulse pharoah albums (summun bukmun umyun and jewels of thought) for $40 each. ok not recently, it was something like 18 months ago, well before he died. and this was not some super random find, this was at the brick and mortar in town with probably the biggest social media presence and most foot traffic

the reason it was so cheap was that the covers were utterly beat. major ringwear, water damage on one, both g at best. and so i asked the buyer and the manager (both of whom i am friends with) what the deal was, and they said that it could be very difficult for them to sell records with demolished covers because a large number under-25s buy albums as much to display as to play. i have discussed this with my few zoomer friends and i believe it checks out

been so into Szabo lately. Mizrab is getting pricey!

I love love love the "VG+ record, G cover" deals, sign me up

while we're waxing nostalgic about the old days of shopping: a huge portion of my collection was really built up circa 2003-2006, out of the secondary overflow bins of Low Yo Yo Stuff in Athens. that place did a lot of its business with touring artists coming through town, who would drop hundreds of dollars a visit on weird niche stuff. their main space was then a true hole-in-the-wall, in what seemed like it was once the ticket booth of the 40 Watt Club. but to deal with some portion of the owner's enormous supply, they also had a few dozen boxes, regularly updated, down the hill in a vintage consignment market called Agora (later renamed Atomic, and now moved to another space).

fucking TONS of $3, $5, $8, $10 mildly worn copies of things that are now $35-45 records (if you're lucky), mixed in with relatively uncool stuff that was maybe somebody else's jam, and no Mitch Miller to be found. i didn't know how good i had it!

also round about 2015 or so, there was a great used shop in Bushwick called Northern Lights, basically across the street from my apartment at the time. their focus was on soul, funk, and jazz; pretty good, popular rock records could be found in the $10 range, in good shape. more importantly to my journey, they also didn't do crazy pricing on jazz, even for popular titles, unless they were basically Wall Records. i got my start buying jazz there just on the "I've heard of this person and it's $10, sure" model. including like, 70s pressings of 60s Blue Note stuff. it's not like the stuff is actually, truly rare. they just didn't max out the price and wait for the rich person willing to pay it. unfortunately they closed up shop, maybe during the pandemic, maybe a little before.

my current go-to is Brooklyn Record Exchange, - super nice crew, great selection, pretty regular turnover in the New Arrivals. i don't find many Crazy Bargains, and allowing for the general upward drift of everything these days, I'd describe all their prices as at least "fair" and sometimes "really good." they also pay out reasonably when i've sold them stuff. honestly the only store in NYC that i can wholeheartedly recommend.

many of these stores have an instagram where they'll hype their fresh used stock w/a video and i always try to "freeze...enhance..." so i can check the price tags and see if it's worth the trip

haha yes!! my iphone screenshots album has so many freeze frames of these instagram stories where someone is flipping through a bin at mach speed ... in my case it's often like, i spotted a prelude / west end / warner palm tree label in a generic 12" sleeve ... but which one?!?

ah gabor szabo....miss the days when one could find The Sorcerer used for $3, it's ten times that nowadays ime.

remember when sade when a couple bucks? her original lps are like $30-$40 now

lovers rock goes for like $100!

Pre-Internet I considered record collectors to be an entirely separate category of person that I existed in opposition to, since I just wanted to hear songs as cheaply as possible and they were an obstacle to that. I wonder how old I was when I began to entertain the concept of having a collection and curating it... had to be post-Internet/mp3 era when physical media began to be superfluous. Like, I paid mad money for import CDs because otherwise I was never going to be able to hear that stuff, it's not like now when I'm like "should I pay $40 for this splatter vinyl of an album that I have on CD and is also on Spotify?" What is it like to be 19 and that having always been your value proposition when record shopping?

haha yes!! my iphone screenshots album has so many freeze frames of these instagram stories where someone is flipping through a bin at mach speed ... in my case it's often like, i spotted a prelude / west end / warner palm tree label in a generic 12" sleeve ... but which one?!?

― the late great, Friday, November 18, 2022 9:52 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

every single one of these IG stories now, they'll flip too fast through the records that interest me and "stop, pull out, show off" some janky looking Journey lp.

xp iirc same w/ love deluxe and stronger than pride. that's wild to me but i guess sade fans are really really really into sade. which ok i get, they're certifiably great

every single one of these IG stories now, they'll flip too fast through the records that interest me and "stop, pull out, show off" some janky looking Journey lp

moments like this one remembers that while we may be on the internet and physically separated by great distance, we do live in the same world 🥲

my current go-to is Brooklyn Record Exchange, - super nice crew, great selection, pretty regular turnover in the New Arrivals. i don't find many Crazy Bargains, and allowing for the general upward drift of everything these days, I'd describe all their prices as at least "fair" and sometimes "really good." they also pay out reasonably when i've sold them stuff. honestly the only store in NYC that i can wholeheartedly recommend.

― Doctor Casino, Friday, 18 November 2022 17:52 (twenty-eight minutes ago) link

I've gotten some good deals here! I like this place.

lets be real if I owned a shop I'd probably use Discogs a lot too. like how the fuck am I supposed to know that 90's represses of Aerosmith records are worth like, 50 bucks apiece? (my local shop got several in and sold them all immediately) what kills me though is when these shopkeepers don't seem to understand what something **actually** sells for, particularly when it comes to newer, out of print records. I'm thinking of one in particular that was released 2010, was on sale on the band's website for $20 until like...2020 or so, after which copies on Discogs started selling at $30, then $50, and then one person bought one at $90 which encouraged sellers to go $150+. just in case there's one person out there willing to spend that much money. I guess it's one thing doing it online in a global marketplace, where you just need 1 of the 8 billion people on the planet to buy it, but physical stores do this too which is so incredibly stupid. I went to one in Boston which had a bunch of cool vaporwave stuff but it was all priced at like $100+. which the copies on Discogs are going for too, but NOBODY IS ACTUALLY BUYING THEM. even worse considering this was a small shop with very limited space!!

one of the shops i was referring to above, a place in Tarzana, has these tightly packed used LP sections and basically anything that might be somewhat desirable is this aspirational price, they're hoping that one in eight billion person will come in and say "yes i need this".
last time i was there i saw an early blue note lee morgan which was noted as having scratches and a skip priced at $60. at that point you're just acting like the record is a rare coin, an object that you're not going to physically use but just show people.

"a store is a river not a lake" reminds me of a shop i went to in, i think, elizabeth NJ (can't seem to find it on google maps, maybe it's closed?) first band i check for is always new order, i immediately see the store's got a thick stack... pull out blue monday, start opening the plastic sleeve, the owner comes over and points at the sign which says to not remove any records from their sleeve without owner present. uh, ok - turn it over and it's something like $75? flipping through, he has like 3 other copies, all priced progressively higher.

however, definitely not a new shop, seems to have been around for a couple decades at least... think the owner was just a bit of a hoarder!

I was in a friend’s shop about a year ago and a customer found a super rare 45. It wasn’t priced, so my friend looked it up on Discogs, where it had gone for $2500. My friend said to the customers — who knew exactly how rare and valuable the record was — “Is $200 ok?” When I asked him about it he said, “$200 now is better than $2500 never, and they’ll tell their friends and be repeat customers.”

He's got a good point there. I know a collector who has boxes of allegedly valuable comics sitting around, but he's sold maybe a handful of them across a year or so of making them available. Unless you find actual buyers who will pay those high market values, it's not actual value.

that's also the hard truth every sneakerhead / streetwear collector needs to learn at some point. sure, celebrity x might have paid $yyyy for that item of clothing, but how much could you get for it right now if you needed the cash today? because that's how much it's actually worth.