WFMU Record Fair: A Brief Report

So I did go to the WFMU Record Fair on Sunday. I’ve attached a picture to prove it. I didn’t buy any records. My goal with Record Shows has traditionally been to find bargains. You often get dealers who don’t know anything about jazz vinyl, and sometimes they under-price the records, and sometimes they are just trying to get rid of records, and sometimes they are happy to bargain so they don’t have to take the records home. There have also been many times where I’ve met collectors who really didn’t know the value of their records, and they underpriced everything that they had. I’ve written here about the guy who had a bunch of original Blue Notes and Prestiges and just priced everything at $5, including a mint copy of

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Mobley LP Sets High For Jazz Collector Price Guide

We’ve been tracking jazz records on eBay for about five years and have built a database of more than 4,000 records. We don’t claim to have captured the sale of every high-priced record on eBay, but we’ve gotten more than our fair share. And, today, we will be entering into the Jazz Collector Price Guide, the highest-priced jazz vinyl we’ve recorded to date, and that is this: Hank Mobley, Blue Note 1568. This was an original U.S. pressing and it was listed in M- condition for both the record and the cover. It sold for $3,805. The previous highest price that we had recorded was for a copy of Sonny Clark, Cool Struttin, Blue Note 1588, which sold for $3,750. It is noteworthy that the Mobley record was sold by the seller Nautiluso, who had that massive collection of about 75 vintage jazz records that were all listed in pristine condition and which generated a little bit of skepticism within the Jazz Collector universe. We’ll continue to keep an eye out for comments on these auctions and we’ll continue to encourage winning bidders to let us know about the condition of their LPs. In addition

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For the $2,000 Bin: Dexter Gordon, True Blue (Again)

A few of the items we’ve been watching have broken the $1,000 barrier, and a few of those have broken the $2,000 barrier.

Dexter Gordon, Dexter Blows Hot and Cool, Dootone 207. This was an original pressing with the red vinyl. The record was listed as M- and the cover was VG++. It was sold by the seller herschel78, who’s been selling quite a bit of rare jazz vinyl and scoring some nice prices with them. This one sold for $2,886. Our previous high for this in the Jazz Collector Price Guide was more than $3,000, so that’s not even a record. We were also watching a later pressing of this record on the Authentic label (which, unfortunately, is the version we own in our collection). Even this one did fairly well, selling for $70, although we’ll never know if the buyer thought he was getting an original.

Also for the $2,000 bin was this one:

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More Blue Notes For The $1,000 Bin

Good that we mentioned those Blue Note tips yesterday: There are a few more original pressings that shall be entering and re-entering the $1,000 bin. Here  they are:

Hank Mobley and Lee Morgan, Peckin’ Time, Blue Note 1574. This is an original pressing and the vinyl is in M- condition. The cover is at least VG++. The price is already around $1,600 with many more hours left before it closes today, so we may be seeing an addition to the $2,000 bin.

Also, Tina Brooks, True Blue, Blue Note 4041. This is an original pressing. Again, the vinyl is listed in M- condition and the cover is VG+. This one has more than a day to go before it closes and

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Soon on eBay: Tina Brooks, Elmo Hope, Bennie Green

Here’s some interesting jazz vinyl on the Jazz Collector watch list over the next few days.

Tina Brooks, True Blue, Blue Note 4041. This is an original pressing. The record is listed as M- and the cover is VG+. The price is already more than $1,000 and there are still four days to go.

Elmo Hope Quintet, Blue Note 5044. This is a nice 10-inch LP with a great cover. This one is in VG++ condition and is being offered by Euclid Records, one of the top sellers of jazz vinyl on eBay. This one is about $100 with several days still to go.

Another high-end Blue Note: Sonny Clark, Cool Struttin’, Blue Note 1588. This one is not in great shape. The vinyl is listed in VG- condition, and the cover looks to be VG. The price is more than $100 now, and it has not yet reached the seller’s reserve.

The Return of Art Pepper, Jazz West 10. This is an original pressing. The vinyl is listed as VG++ and the

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Today on eBay: Tal, Drew, Kenny Dorham, True Blue

We had a couple of hours to kill last night, so we did something we used to do every day: Scroll through a full 24 hours worth of jazz records listed on eBay. It was good timing, because we found some nice items for our Jazz Collector readers and one item we plan to bid on for ourselves.

Our friends at Euclid Records have a nice batch closing today, including: Kenny Drew Trio, Riverside 224. This is an original white label pressing and is listed in M- condition for both the record and the cover. The current price is $1,256, so, Kenny Drew, welcome again to the $1,000 bin. Also from Euclid is The Tal Farlow Album, Norgran 1047. This is the 12-inch version with the beautiful cover by David Stone Martin. It is in M- condition for both the record and the cover and is currently in the $60 price range. My friend Dan Axelrod, who was Tal’s good friend and protege, swears that the 10-inch version of this record offers far better sound quality than the 12-inch version. I suppose that’s why he has more than a dozen copies of the 10-inch version. Nonetheless, the 12-inch Tal Farlow Album is quite lovely to listen to and quite collectible and is certainly a worthy addition to any collection.

It always pays to read the eBay listings carefully. Here’s an example why:

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Adventures in Jazz Collecting, Part 4

So I finally got home on Monday after my trip to Trenton and massive traffic on the Belt Parkway through Brooklyn and Queens. I started unloading the records, My nosy neighbor was watching. I smiled. “Records,” I said. I’m not sure she knew what I was talking about. The records filled the front foyer of my house. There were seven crates altogether. I had decided to just take everything that Rob had. This included Christmas records, and Aretha Franklin, and some pretty well damaged jazz records. The first two crates I looked through had nothing. Was it all an illusion? In my rush of adrenaline and musk and mold and dust, did I imagine that there were collectible jazz records in this batch? I went searching for the Tina Brooks record. This I knew was a collectible. I grabbed it. The moldy flakes from the cover fell off in my hands. I grabbed the vinyl, went upstairs and put it on my VPI record cleaner. The dust and dirt and grime and mold came off, but the record was in only VG condition. And the cover? It was pretty bad, and it reeked of mold and musk. I threw it in the garbage. Not a good start.

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Adventures in Jazz Collecting, Part 3

OK, so I let the nice collection in Hartford slip through my fingers. But I knew there was another option: Trenton, New Jersey. For the past couple of weeks I’d been dealing on line and on the phone with a guy named Rob in Trenton. Rob said his father had a friend who passed away and left his records to Rob’s dad, who had also passed away. Rob had been holding on to the records for years and was now ready to get rid of them. He’d come across Jazz Collector on line and saw some of the prices in the Price Guide and figured maybe they were worth something. We chatted and he sent me a bunch of pictures of records. There were definitely some nice ones in there, but there was no way for me to tell if they were originals or if they were in good condition. So I didn’t get too excited. Besides, I wasn’t sure what Rob wanted to do. At first I thought he might be interested in selling the records himself on eBay, and I told him that, in my opinion, that would be the way to get the best value for the records.

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Updating the $1,000 Bin

We’ve been updating the Jazz Collector Price Guide this morning and we just added a fairly  large group of records that surpassed the $1,000 price barrier. We’ve mentioned some of these before on Jazz Collector, but it’s interesting to see the group all at once. There are no links attached to these, by the way, so don’t try clicking them. Here goes:

Bent Axen, Let’s Keep the Message, Debut 133. There are actually two copies of this that fit into the category. They were both in M- condition, both cover and record. One sold for $1,790.90 and the other sold for $1,326.

Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus, Prestige 7079. There are two copies of this as well. One was sold by the Jazz Record Center and was in M- condition, both record and cover. It sold for $1,492. the other was in VG++/VG+ condition. It sold for $1,575. Go figure.

Here’s the only one on the list that was a bit of a surprise:

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For the Price Guide: Tina Brooks, Shades of Redd

Here are still a few more for the Jazz Collector Price Guide. This have already been logged into the database, so you can see them if you click on the price guide. 

Jutta Hipp, Jutta, Blue Note 5056. This was an original 10-inch LP in VG+ conditon, both record and cover. The price was $330.

Jackie McLean, Capuchin Swing, Blue Note 4038. This was a second pressing in M- condition. The price was $191.30.

Sonny Rollins, Newk’s Time, Blue Note 4001. This was an original West 63rd street pressing in VG+ condition, both record and cover. It sold for $598.

Here’s a real heavyweight we’ve talked about previously:

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