All Things Considered, Some Surprising Prices

Time to catch up with some of the items we’ve been watching this past week. We will do this in a few posts throughout the weekend. We’ll start with some of those items sold by the seller bobdjukic, who’s clearly got something going on that enables him to get wacky prices as well as staggering numbers of page views.

We’ll start with Thelonious Monk, Monk’s Music, Riverside 1102. This was a later stereo pressing, with that gold stereo stamp that many of the Riverside’s carried. Clearly not an original, which was a white label mono. One time on eBay, an original copy sold for more than $3,000. We chronicled it on Jazz Collector and it created quite a stir. See here. In any case that price for a mono was an aberration, just as we feel the price here for a stereo is an aberration. This copy, in M- condition for the record and cover, sold for $413.55. The seller actually wrote this in his listing: “Monstrously rare stereo pressing, many times rarer than the mono.” Yikes.  The other amazing thing about this record: It had more than 1,700 page views in eBay. Yikes again.

Speaking of second pressings, there was the copy of John Coltrane, Giant Steps, Atlantic 1311. This was the one with the bulls-eye label, that was characterized as being of the same provenance as the black label. This record

was in VG++ condition for both the record and cover and eventually sold for $410.99. There was a bit of debate about this in our previous post and in the end Michel somehow conceded that this may be a co-original, based on the final price. But methinks I detect a touch of sarcasm in Michel’s comments. This is not an original, whatever the price.

This was an original: Johnny Griffin, A Blowing Session, Blue Note 1559. The record was VG- and the cover was G+ and it still sold for $576. One more time: Yikes.

Finally, this was an original as well in nice condition: Art Taylor, Taylor’s Wailers, Prestige 7117. It was a yellow label, New York address. The record was M- and the cover was VG+. The price was $590, which certainly, given the context of the rest of these records, seems actually quite sane to us.