Some Interesting 10-Inch LPs
So this is what my life has come to: It’s 4 o’clock in the morning and I am sitting in front of my computer entering record prices into a database. The things we do for love. Or obsession. Sometimes I have trouble telling the two apart.
Anyway, here are some of the items I’ve been watching on eBay the past few days:
Billie Holiday, At Jazz At The Philharmonic, Clef 169. This is a 10-inch LP with a beautiful cover by David Stone Martin. This copy was in M-/M- condition and sold for $610. This is a higher price than I’ve seen this record sell for in the past and I’m wondering if there’s anything about this record, aside from the condition, that drove the price up. There’s one Billie record that supposedly had an illustration by Andy Warhol, but I don’t think this is the one. Does anyone out there want to speculate on an answer?
The dealer selling the Billie Holiday LP had a batch of other nice 10-inch records as well. He had a mint copy of Bird and Diz, Clef 512 that sold for $200. I would have loved it, but I’ve just been spending too much money lately. Maybe some other time. The other ones that caught my eye were: Art Farmer, Work of Art, Prestige 162. This was M-/VG+ and sold for $103.50; and Illinois Jacquet, Clef 112, in M- condition for $130. I didn’t save the links, but you can just do a search on eBay of completed items.
Here’s another interesting 10-inch LP that sold on eBay this week: Dizzy Gillespie, Horn of Plenty, Blue Note 5017. It was in VG+/VG+ condition and sold for $45. I don’t recall seeing another Dizzy LP on Blue Note and I don’t recall seeing a 12-inch version of this LP. But, then again, as we learned earlier this week, I am not the ultimate authority on Blue Note. I’ll pose it to the question to the proper authorities and post the answer in a future newsletter.
There are many great records that are not among the rarest of collectibles and can be added to a collection for a reasonable price. A record I love is Sonny Stitt, 37 Minutes and 48 Seconds, Roost 2219. A nice copy sold on eBay this week for $41. Not bad.
Finally, there was a copy this week of The Cats, New Jazz 8217, with John Coltrane, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell, Idrees Sulieman, Doug Watkins and Louis Hayes. I once made a great trade to acquire this record, but I don’t remember what I gave up. I do remember that I was in the basement of a friend’s house and I had a broken leg and he had to leave and he locked me in there with all of his records. It was a strange experience, but it was worth it to get an original pressing of The Cats. Of course, I no longer have that original pressing, but instead have a Status pressing. But that’s another story for another day. The copy of The Cats that sold on eBay this week went for $1,403.11. Take a look.
Anyway, the reason I’m looking at all these records on eBay is to update the Price Guide on jazzcollector.com. We’ve been adding about 100 to 150 entries each week lately. If you go to Latest Prices, those are the prices that we entered last week, up until Friday,
April 23. We generally post the new version of Latest Prices over the weekend and update the entire Price Guide at the same time. It’s an interesting exercise compiling the guide and I hope it makes for interesting reading.
See you tomorrow. — Al