Tracking Another Great Record Score (Not Mine, This Time)

Time for a guest column, this one from our friend and frequent contributor Gregory the Fish.

By Gregory the Fish

I love jazz and I love collecting jazz records. Everyone reading this does. But none of us is rich enough to buy every record we want whenever we want to. We’ve all read stories about buying collections, and it seems so rewarding… you buy a big fat stack of records for a great bulk deal, keep some real treasures, make your money up selling the doubles, and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But how does one go about finding these collections? We don’t all have big websites like this one that pull in the e-mails.

I just randomly started trying a few things. Posting on various websites, etc. Since then I have purchased a few very small collections of a few dozen records each, and made a little profit, but never had a good score of keepers… that is, until about two months ago. I randomly got an e-mail responding to one of the posts I had made, mentioning a collection… about 300 records. Not huge, but way more than I had dealt with buying before. I asked if there were any pictures, expecting a few shots of crates that I could gauge from the visible records. This guy took a picture of every single individual record jacket and sent them to me. I appreciated it, especially because there were some real items of interest. Some nice-looking Prestige and Blue Note records, of course, as well as several things like Clifford Brown on Emarcy, a dozen or so nice Verves, some great jazz on Atlantic, even a desirable Flying Dutchman or two. I was interested. Even in moderate condition or if they weren’t all originals, this collection had to have at least one thing I would want to keep, and it was definitely full of potential flips to buy other records, too. A meeting was arranged.

The couple that I ended up meeting were interesting people. They had three slot machines in their basement, right next to a huge industrial gumball machine. No records. I had no idea why I was in the basement, but since it was furnished and since I was being snuggled by the friendliest dog I have ever met, I figured it was safe. It was. The husband said his dad had left him a pile of records and he wasn’t much of a jazz fan, opened a closet door and there were the records. He started pulling out stacks – vertical stacks. The jackets were all almost entirely NM, and the records were almost all VG++ or so, seemingly unplayed. I found some great stuff. The Blue Notes weren’t all originals, but the Bennie Green and 3 Sounds records were. There was a stone mint Liberty press of “Midnight Blue”, still in the shrink wrap, NYC-label “Cookin’” with Miles on Prestige, a white promo copy The Esoteric Circle on Flying Dutchman, the Clifford Brown Emarcys were all original, as were the Verves… and several more as pictured, though I had sold a few things that were doubles or not originals by the time I took the picture. They were all in great condition. Plus, there were lots of things I don’t have any personal interest in but that are collectible – fancy Aretha Franklins on Atlantic, BB King on Crown, Clyde McPhatter, rare James Brown and Marvin Gaye, some stuff on Kudu, etc. But back to the exchange.

As I looked through everything, the husband mentioned that he had to be somewhere, and told me his wife would handle it. She had been chatting with me as I perused, so we had a good rapport going. She then mentioned that they had lots of 45s they didn’t want. I told her I know nothing about 45s, and they wouldn’t affect my offer at all, but I’d take them off their hands if they wanted to get rid of them. Speaking of offers, I had one in mind. I expected to haggle a bit, but she accepted it outright. I felt a little guilty, because I had started a bit low, so I reminded her that if she was willing to research everything on her own, she could make much more money selling individually online, but she said my offer was essentially the same as what they had agreed together to sell the lot for, and that she was happy to get them out of the house. Then we shook hands and some cash was exchanged. After another minute of me picking up piles of records, she saw an Aretha record that she said she had really loved. I took the hint and said she could keep it, no change in the offer. She was grateful, and it made me feel good, too. Around this time, her husband came back downstairs, noticed that I was packing up boxes, and said “thank god they’ll be out of here!” Their son also came downstairs and introduced himself. He is a high school basketball player. Nice kid. He offered to help me load the records in the car, which I was grateful for. The dog hopped into my car, which she apparently never does, and we all had a good laugh. We coaxed her out, I drove off happy as a clam, and enjoyed sorting through everything and listening to my new scores throughout the rest of that weekend. In fact, I am still getting through some of it. There were even a few valuable 45s in the pile, and they went to good homes. What a score.