Tracking Four For the $1,000 Bin
Here is some jazz vinyl we are watching now on eBay that we expect will end up in the proverbial $1,000 bin:
Kenny Dorham, Quiet Kenny, New Jazz 8225. This is an original pressing with the deep grooves and purple label and it is a promo copy as well. The seller has it listed in VG++ condition for both the record and the cover and the bidding is already more than $700 with five days to go. This will end up in the $2,000 bin, won’t it?
This one may end up there as well: Dexter Gordon, Dexter Blows Hot and Cool, Dootone 207. This is an original pressing with the red vinyl. The record is VG+ and the cover is VG++. This one is around $200 and there are still five days of bidding.
This is a nice one from Euclid Records: Helen Merrill, Emarcy 36006. This is an original pressing with the drummer logo and the blue writing on the back. The record is listed as VG++ and the cover is M-. The top bid is nearly $700 with almost a day left.
Finally, there is another KD record: Kenny Dorham, Afro-Cuban, Blue Note 1535. This is an original Lexington Avenue, deep groove, flat edge pressing. It is listed in M- condition for both the record and the cover. The bidding is at $565, but the sky is the limit for this record in this condition.
cover on the Dexter is vg with bottom seam totally split. expect under 1k on this one
Two Questions,
Is there a reason why “Quiet Kenny” is worth a good bit more than other New Jazz records from the same time? It’s a hell of a an album, don’t get me wrong, but I was curious if it was rarer than others for some reason?
My other question is what is the reason why promo copies do better at auction much of the time. I only have one album that I have both a promo and regular copy of, and the promo is much nicer. But this is hardly a valid comparison as the promo is in pristine condition.
Thanks,
I’ve always just assumed that promo copies fetched higher prices because they tend to be among the first records pressed. But could be the increased rarity of the promos themselves.
I’ve read promos were made better because they were for airplay.
Promos weren’t made any different for airplay, they were often just early (not always first, for instance I have “Promotional Copy” stamped copy of Bags Groove with Bergenfield labels) pressings that were played with more care on better radio station turntable setups. This often leads to better sounding records down the road.
Promos get less interest in Japan, and among certain buyers, than similar, non-promo issues because, although they are first pressings, they were not commercially available. The illusion of buying it new at the local record shoppe in 1957 doesn’t hold. Personally, and as a dealer, I’ve always found this strange.
And as established before, the Asians must be the ones chasing these gems and paying whatever the have to, ’cause that one question and that one answer on the Dexter Gordon auction says it all:
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Q: can you send it to japan? thanks.
A: Yes, I can ship to Japan Thanks
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I think it was London Calling who managed to figure out that a lot of the expensive gems were sold to buyers in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia. The one thing I wonder is if these buyers are actual collectors or investors. During my peak years of collecting seventies funk, I once heard the story about ‘these Japs’ buying up everything they could find, just to bring it with them to Japan and store it in vaults. The other thing I do know for sure is that, according to friends who actually visited Japan, you can find record stores all over the place that actually have bins and bins full of the most precious and extremely hard to find collectables, sometimes even several copies of them too. I don’t know why I’m telling all this. It just interests me to know more about the reason for this “Asian Connection” in jazz auctions! 😉
Mattyman
In 1980 I made my first trip to the USA,travelling from New York to New Orleans and then to California.I visited record shops wherever I was and in LA I encountered the late Leon Leavitt.I spent the whole afternoon searching in a real vinyl paradise and got a heavy group of records home.At my question about high prices for some labels,Leo replied with these exact words:the market is being ruined by two kinds of customers:Japanese and Italians.He used the term ruined,30 years ago.He gave me a wantlist I still have of records he was searching for:I had none then.I’ve most of them now.
I met Leon too. It must have been somewhere in the mid seventies. He came to my hotel room in L.A. to deliver records won in his auction. He was gone in a few seconds. Even did not shake hands!
When i was at Dayton’s in NYC, the seller Jay, the fat guy, told me that the Japs were his prime customers. They earned their flight tickets and stay in the US with the proceeds of their sales back home.
re promos: one should distinguish between records and sleeves with promo stamps and those with specially coloured labels. I, for one, like a red stamped promo on Pacific Jazz or a black stamped on Contemporary,(or a Prestige stamped “not for sale”), but I don’t like a white labeled Columbia or United Artists, because, for me, those are not originals.
In general, one can assume that the stamped copies are original first pressings.
I’ve been a nipponophile for many years and have been to Japan a few times for short and extended stays. I can speak and right acceptably(although I was a lot better right after college and a few years of Japanese). One of the things that most intrigues me about Japanese culture is the things they enjoy about American(and to a lesser extent Western Culture). The Japanese love a lot of the same things I love, Jazz, Vinyl, Baseball, and Pastries. I have spent a decent amount of time in Japanese records shops and it’s an experience. I would love to right an article about it, I think I’m going to email Al and ask if he would mind.
But to address one issue, I don’t think they are “ruining” the market. They just have a lot of demand which drives up prices. As I understand it, this demand has existed since the 70’s and the times went growth in Japan was exponential and there was a lot of new wealth in the country. The Japanese love of jazz has been since post WWII and has existed before that. I would love to share more, hopefully I can do a guest post.
Hi Rudolf, just a quick question for you with regards to your comment about promo labels on Columbia: I have a few original / first press copies of Kind of Blue, one of which was a promo DG six-eye white label… Did they also have the “not for sale” stamp on the original red-labels by any chance ?
p.s. – I always found the Atlantic Promo’s to be the cheap ones… They have that flat lifeless white label, often with a “not for sale” stamp on the label and/or on the record cover itself.
don-lucky: I am not sure. I remember to have seen a later red label original with a white sticker ” not for sale”.
I have here in front of me “Miles Smiles” CL 2601 with a red promo stamp on the rear and white sheet on the front saying “Columbia Records radio service -not for sale”. The red labels have no particular sign.
In resume: I think the white colour promo labels were for the earlier catalogue numbers, later they abandoned this practice.
true, the Atlantic promos were horrendous.
I have a few different variations of promos, some with stamps, and some with different labels. I have several Coltrane Impulses with the white & black labels and nothing else on the sleeves themselves to identify them as such. And then there’s one Impulse with a promo stamp inside the gatefold and normal orange and black labels.
I also have some BNs and Prestiges with AUDITION COPY in fairly large letters stamped on the back. I don’t think these do as well with collectors.
Regarding Japanese buyers, for years I was under the impression that they were simply the ones responsible for pushing the prices of records (specifically Blue Note, at that time) to the 4 figure heights they’ve reached in the last ten years, but I’ve taken the time to investigate a lot of the music/artists that emerged from Japan’s jazz scene in the 60s and 70s. And a lot of it is exquisite. I can see why artists like Mal Waldron, who did a fair bit of recording exclusively in Japan, had a lot of admiration for many of his contemporaries there.
I suspect that the majority of the interest coming from Japanese buyers on ebay are from actual collectors, not sellers. This is a country, much like Holland, France or Denmark, that contributed a wealth of both talent and opportunity to the music, specifically at that time, and allowed for Jazz culture to continue to flourish when a lot of those opportunities had diminished altogether in the US.
Out of curiosity, ok, plain nosiness, I have been poking about in ebay jazz auction results to try and make sense of “the market”.
From what I have found, among recent big-ticket Jazz/ Blue Note auctions, certainly there has been a significant Japanese presence, but also from all around Europe and the US.
When you track Japaneses buyers purchases through the “see all feedback” listing,there are some very prolific Japanese ebay buyers among them. One member – Yoshikinyseki – buys between four and nine US jazz albums a day, every day of the week. Thats either a very bad record habit or he’s in the recyling business.
Another seller is US-based, has 15 original Blue Notes up for auction, but all located in South Korea. This is a two way street, selling them back to the US.
Almost all the sellers of recent Blue Note $500-$1000+ auctions, that album was a one-off. The rest of their sales are $10-a-shot rock and pop.Even Bob Djukic’s feedback.
All I have found is that big-ticket jazz auction winners only bid 1-4 seconds before close, never make early bids, and drop a very large amount of money on the table.
My personal thought on white label promos is that they are no different than first pressing non-promos. For example, wouldn’t a label like Atlantic be doing a normal production run on a new release and then simply set aside x-number of copies to receive the white label and go to radio while the rest to get the standard label to go to the shops? So it would all be a first-run on the press and a white label is no more a “first press” than others run at the same time that just got a regular label. The collectibiliy comes strictly from the fact that there are *fewer copies* with a white label, so if that matters to you then you’ll cough up more for it. Similarly, on Blue Note and Prestige they did the normal run and then just stamped it ‘Audition Copy’ to differentiate who it got sent to. Again the promo in that case is no more of a “first” or earlier press than another copy with the same pressing characteristics (DG, ear etc).
Japhy: your personal thought seems objectively the correct one. But from a very subjective point of view, I largely prefer a regular, standard pressing, with or without promo stamps. I don’t care for an eventual, theoretical, extra value of white labels because of their scarcity, which I think is highly debatable, since most collectors, I believe, don’t fancy them.
Thanks for leaving that one comment, London Calling, ’cause I even referred to you in my earlier comment here, since I knew you had done some research on the subject. There’s one thing in your comment that I’ll quote right here: “One member – Yoshikinyseki – buys between four and nine US jazz albums a day, every day of the week. That’s either a very bad record habit or he’s in the recycling business. Another seller is US-based, has 15 original Blue Notes up for auction, but all located in South Korea. This is a two way street, selling them back to the US. Almost all the sellers of recent Blue Note $500-$1000+ auctions, that album was a one-off. The rest of their sales are $10-a-shot rock and pop.”
When I read stuff like that, I don’t know about the older cats, it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, since what London Calling has found out has nothing to do with the actual collecting of records. Especially if I have to read that these guys buy 4 to 9 US Jazz records a day, every day of the week! From my years as a collector of seventies funk I have learned a lot about the dirty ways of doing business sometimes, but to read that -apparently- the “Asian Connection” is only buying collectables in bulk in order to sell them back for big dough on the US/Euro market, then indeed it’s just a, let’s say, very disappointing thing to know, especially since they don’t seem to care about the music. So thanks, London Calling, for exposing the “Asian Connection” one more time 😉 Where will this end for the rookies? Auctions with the good ol’ hammer at Sotheby’s as if it was the next Van Gogh?
Mattyman
Mattyman:I think that sometimes a buyer who makes bids at such a rate may be buying for a record ” collective” or an individual store. It’s really no different than what I might do after a healthy auction-reinvest the money earned into buying more gems for resale! I don’t think it becomes something sinister because the bidder lives overseas.
dottorjazz: If leavitt said the market was being “ruined” by buyers from Japan and Italy,I’m sure he neglected to mention his role in that market. Buying up collections from owners ‘on the cheap’,then offering them to foreign bidders in highly competitive auctions. He did pretty well for himself in what was the genesis of all that we now hate-or love-about ebay.
Rudolf:”the seller Jay, the fat guy, told me that the Japs were his prime customers.” I’m neither fat nor Asian,but something tells me this passage could use a rewrite,you know?
Just my two cents.
ceedee: Re Leon: this was the pre-EBay period. Leon, who was sourcing in the US, had to compete with Japanese buyers/distributors who came especially to the US to source and re-sell in Japan. So he was in direct competition.
Regarding Jay, not exactly a skinny guy, to say the least, who sold primarily to the honourable subjects of His Imperial Highness.
Clearly the ebbs and flows of product going overseas can be explained in part by changes in exchange rates. Right now the yen/dollar is only ~80, vs 100-120 of recent years, so our LPs seem cheaper on relative basis. From the days of Euro being close to the dollar we know have 1.4ish dollars per euro. Unlike the yen this is not a clear difference vs recent past, but is up somewhat. I am not sure when you guys think the Euro buyers were at their peak in terms of auction wins, but I would guess it would at least somewhat correlate with exchange rate movements.
@ ceedee: makes sense and maybe you’re right. Buying for a record collective. Still one wonders if he buys for a collective, who gets what? But then again: whether we’re right or wrong, these in depth discussions here offer a great deal of fresh and different views to learn from, not to mention the fact that after I read about Leon Leavitt, I went on Google to learn more about this person and I found some great conversations on the Organissimo forum about him, his monumental collection and the following auctions when he passed. Here and there I read that he even owned multiple copies of extremely hard to find gems. Anyway, it’s a joy to read through the comments and marvel over all the anecdotes from the older cats here, who obviously already collected jazz when I was still in my diapers! 😀