What’s Happening With Jazz Vinyl?

So, I lost the auction for The Unique Thelonious Monk. No big deal. The bigger revelation was the prices on some of the other records on the Jazz  Record Center auction. Having been off eBay for a few months dealing with other things in life, I wasn’t prepared for what I considered to be a fairly drastic change in the market. Or perhaps this has been going on for a while and I hadn’t noticed? Or perhaps this is just an aberration based on the reputation of the Jazz Record Center? Or just one or two sellers with lots of money to spend?  Let me share with you some of the biggest surprises that I encountered, starting with The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, Riverside 1169. This was an original stereo pressing that looked to be in M- condition for both the record and the cover. The final price was $787.22. Per Popsike, this is the highest price ever recorded for any copy of this record. But a stereo copy?

Not to be outdone, the Jazz Record Center also  had a mono copy of The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, Riverside 320. This was the original deep-groove pressing with the blue logo and small reels label. The record was probably in M- condition and the cover was EX, with some minor marks. This one sold for $1036, more than $300 more than any previous Wes Montgomery record has ever sold for, again according to Popsike.

J.R. Monterose, Blue Note 1536. This was not an original pressing, and I extend my thanks to the reader JazzFan for pointing this out. Granted, it had the Lexington Avenue address on the labels, but it didn’t have the deep grooves. In my experience, this meant that Blue Note had some Lexington Avenue addresses left over during a later era, typically Liberty, and slapped them on a later pressing. I had a Herbie Nichols LP of the same type and tried to sell it on eBay for $100 a few years ago, but there were no takers. This J.R. Monterose record sold for $1,898.90

I was shocked to see one of the Monk records on Columbia sell for more than $1,000: Thelonious Monk, Criss-Cross, Columbia 2038.The record and cover looked to be in M- condition and the final price was $1,237.12. The rationale, such as it is, was that this was a white-label promo copy. My guess is that the folks at the Jazz Record Center were fairly surprised as well, since they only had a $75 starting price for this one.

What about this one: Thelonious Monk, Big Bank and Quartet in Concert, Columbia 2164. The cover was in the original shrink wrap and the record sealed in an inner sleeve, which is something Columbia seemed to do in those days. The record sold for $510. It had never sold for more than $100 before.

Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t  exactly clear.