Month: February 2010

A Pair To Watch on eBay

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Here are a couple we’re watching on eBay today:

Monica Zetterlund with Bill Evans, Waltz For Debby, Phillips 08222PL. This is an original Swedish pressing. The vinyl is rated as VG++ and the cover is rated M-. The current price is a bit over $300.

Booker Ervin, The Blues Book, Prestige 7340. This is an original blue label mono pressing, The record is listed as M- and the cover looks like VG++. The current price is about $55. Curious to see how this one sells, after seeing the Don Patterson sell for more than $70 the other day.

Catching Up on Some Odds and Ends

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Here are a few odds and ends we’ve been watching:

So when did this become a collectible: Don Patterson, The Hip Cake Walk, Prestige 7349? This was stereo pressing with the blue label. It was in M- condition for the vinyl and probably VG++ for the cover. It sold for $71. I realize that is not a Blue Note price, but I kind of viewed this as a $20 record. Is it the presence of Booker Ervin? I’ve seen certain Booker Ervin records, The Song Book on Prestige and The Book on Bethlehem, sell for nice collectible prices, but not any previous Don Pattersons on Prestige.

Here’s a nice Verve: Lester Young and Teddy Wilson, Pres and Teddy, Verve 8205. This was an original pressing with the trumpeter logo. It is also

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On EBay: Norgans, Riverside, Transition, More

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Here are some interesting items on eBay now:

My friend Steve at Roundagain Records in Providence has a few nice records closing pretty soon, including: Bud Powell, Jazz Original, Norgran 1017. This is an original yellow label, deep groove pressing. The record is VG++ and the cover is VG+. The price is already close to $150. Here’s another Norgran: An Evening With Anita O’Day, Norgran 1057. This is also an original yellow label pressing. The record and cover are in M- condition and the price is about $115. Here’s one more: Lucky Thompson, Lucky Strikes, Transition 21. This one is in VG+ to VG++ condition for the cover and record and it includes the booklet, which is not always so easy to find with the record anymore. This one is close to $200.

This one is more than $80 but hasn’t yet met the seller’s reserve price:

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Jazz Vinyl Countdown: Sonny 10-Inch Prestige

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How do you place a value on an album like this: Sonny Rollins Quartet, Prestige 137? Here’s my story: I purchased a copy of this record about 25 years ago as part of a large collection. It is quite, quite rare, Sonny is one of my favorite artists and it has this great cover picture of him from the early 1950s with slicked-back hair and a wisp of a mustache. A real beauty, right? However, the copy I owned was in pretty poor shape and a few years ago I picked up a near mint copy on eBay for $200. Actually, it was advertised as near mint and it’s not near mint, but that’s another story. So I’ve been sitting with two copies of this record, one in poor shape, and as I’ve been trying to weed doubles out of my collection, I’ve put this one aside and avoided making a decision. For some reason, this week

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Catching Up: Morgan, Blakey, Kenny Dorham

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Here are a few records we’ve been watching:

Lee Morgan, The Cooker, Blue Note 1578. This seemed to be an original pressing listed as being in near mint condition. The price was $741. It’s hard to think of a record selling for $741 as being a bargain but given Blue Note prices lately, this seems kind of low. I had expected it to break into the $1,000 bin.

Because of some of the chatter on the site, we’ve also decided to keep an eye on more second pressings, such as this one: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, The Big Beat, Blue Note 4029. This was a New York USA pressing — not an original — and it was

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What To Do With Two Covers: A Simple Solution

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One of the great things about doing the Jazz Collector site is that I get to learn along with everyone else. Remember I did that post the other day about the two Teddy Charles Prestige covers and Rudolf replied, as I hoped he would, and he mentioned the Jon Eardley Seven, Prestige 7033, and how Prestige just decided one day that it would no longer be a Jon Eardley record and would now be a Zoot Sims record, Zoot Sims Down East, only they didn’t change the number, they just changed the packaging. And I read that and I thought to myself: Whoops, I think I have both of those records, in different parts of my collection: One under “E” for Eardley and the other under “S” for Sims. Now, here’s the real beauty of the entire situation:

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What Makes a Collectible a Collectible?

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In another post (A Visit To A Record Store, Part 2), Jan poses an interesting question, addressed to experienced and serious collectors: What do you consider to be collectible and how do you decide if a second pressing of a record is collectible or not?

I am not, I must admit, among the most serious of collectors. I know this sounds odd coming from the guy who writes about jazz records every day, pores over eBay listings to decide which records to put in the Price Guide and writes articles under the headline “Confessions of a Vinyl Addict.”

However, and this gets to Jan’s point: The copy of Saxophone Colossus in my collection is a Bergenfield, N.J. pressing. Same with Tenor Madness. I have the Bergenfield copies, they are in great condition, they have yellow labels, this is enough for me. I have the music in an early pressing, it sounds great, I’m OK. Would I like a New York pressing of both of these records? Yes. Would I ever obsess about it? No. Would I ever pay the going rate on eBay for them? Not a chance.

The people I’ve always considered to be “serious collectors” wouldn’t accept these second pressings and are constantly hunting for the original pressings and would not be content with anything but an original. I do think, however, things are changing and the

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More Blue Notes, More Big Price Tags

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Catching up on some recent eBay sales.

Here’s one that was quite a surprise: Jimmy Smith at the Organ, Blue Note 1525. This was an original Lexington Avenue pressing. The record was M- and the cover was VG++.  Normally the Jimmy Smith Blue Notes have not fetched huge dollars, but something is changing in the Blue Note market: All of the originals are going up in value and even later pressings are starting to sell at collectible prices. This one sold for an eye-popping $511.

May as well stick with some more Blue Notes: Kenny Burrell, Blue Lights Volume 1. This one, of course, has the cover illustration by Andy Warhol. The record was

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A Visit to A Record Store, Part 3

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So many comments to follow up on, but first let me finish my little trilogy about my visit to Infinity Records. Given the market conditions for music the days, it’s easy to assume that the days of the brick and mortar record store are numbered. In the mainstream music market, CDs are collapsing as the medium shifts to an online digital model. In the collectibles market, eBay has become the dominant sales medium. But, for now at least, it seems there is still room for a few places where people can physically walk into a store and purchase music. I happened to be in lower Manhattan a few weeks ago with time to kill and I popped in to J&R Music. It was jam-packed with people. And I was amazed to see the rows and rows and rows of CDs. They even had four bins of new vinyl — lots of recent Blue Note pressings — as well as a wall full of collectible vinyl that featured autographed covers, including Billie Holiday, Dexter Gordon and others.  The key was that they were comprehensive: You got the sense that if there was a jazz CD you wanted, you’d be able to find it there — as opposed to walking into a Border’s or Barnes and Noble, where the music is clearly secondary. There is also room, I think, for good record stores that understand the collectibles market. I spoke to Joe Ostermeier at Infinity — that’s Joe in the picture, standing in front of his wall of records — and he said business is still solid, no major let up as the music world has

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A Visit To A Record Store, Part 2

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OK, so I was at my favorite record store, Infinity Records, and I was asking the guys to pull records off the wall and one of the records was this one: Teddy Charles (with Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Giuffre), Collaboration West, Prestige 7028. I knew the record was familiar and I was pretty sure I owned it but I started doubting myself because (1) I have too many records too keep track of every single one and (2) Remember I had that birthday last week and age does awful things to one’s memory and (3) I still do remember record covers and this cover did not look familiar at all. So I looked at the record and it was a New York pressing, deep groove, mono, RVG in the deadwax, yellow label, all the stuff you would look for. The vinyl was in pretty nice VG++ condition and the cover was a shade below M-. The price was fair as well: $75. So I bought the record, and put it in the bag with the Tal record and a couple of others and I got in the car and started driving home and I kept pondering and pondering this Teddy Charles record on Prestige and I realized, “Hey, wait a second. I have that record. But the

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