eBay Responds To Nautiluso Questions (Sort Of)

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If we’re going to get to the bottom of the Nautiluso case, eBay is probably not going to be all that helpful, based on the initial response from their public relations people to our inquiries. We posed a few questions and actually had hoped to speak to someone directly at eBay, but we wound up talking to a PR person from an outside firm and she relayed the questions and relayed the responses. We’ll follow up again after the Thanksgiving holiday. Meanwhile, this is what eBay has to say about Nautiluso:

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Esoteric Question Of The Day: Does This LP Have RVG?

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Duonri reminded me that I didn’t include this record from Nautiluso in the list: Jackie McLean, The New Tradition, Ad Lib 6601. This was listed in M- condition and wound up selling for $4,036, the highest price we’ve ever recorded for a jazz record on the Jazz Collector Price Guide. So I went back to the original listing in order to record it, and I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before: The seller says this one has the RVG in the deadwax? The question I ask: Is this possible — does an original pressing of The New Tradition have the RVG in the deadwax, or did he just make that up? I would have looked in my own collection for the answer but, unfortunately, I sold my copy of The New Tradition for a mere $400 nearly 20 years ago. Many of you may have heard this story before, but I sold a bunch of my rarest records in one shot so I could buy a boat. Six months later

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A Winning Nautiluso Bidder: Still No Record

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We finally tracked down one of the buyers from the Nautiluso auction. Paul Sagerman is a collector in Tuscon, Ariz. He had purchased the LP: Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington on Riverside. It was an original pressing in near mint condition and the price was between $500 and $600. Sagerman was the one who had original filed the negative feedback on Nautiluso back on October 14 when he suspected that the auction was not legitimate. However, he withdrew the negative feedback after he learned that the seller would accept Pay Pal. So far, Sagerman has not received his record and has filed a dispute with eBay. Originally, Sagerman said he had planned to bid on about 20 records, but was concerned when the seller did not respond to his questions. “I asked for a scan of the label, a scan of the back cover and

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Nautiluso: Starting To Assess The Damage

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I just looked back again at the records we were watching from Nautiluso and the numbers are staggering. Here are some of the prices that we recorded:

Hank Mobley, Blue Note 1568: $3,805

Sonny Clark, Cool Struttin’, Blue Note 1588: $3,750

Tina Brooks, True Blue: $3,249.99

Jutta Hipp With Zoot Sims: $3,242.99

J.R. Monterose, Blue Note 1536: $2,247.22

Tommy Flanagan Overseas: $2,247

Bill Evans, Waltz For Debby: $1,500

Hank Mobley, Blue Note 1540: $1,705

Lou Donaldson, Quartet, Quintet, Sextet: $1,175

That’s a total of about $23,000 for just nine records. Perhaps these were the ones that sold for the highest prices but, still, with 75 jazz records that week, you could still be looking at $60,000 or more. Maybe it’s not Bernie Madoff territory, but in our little world of Jazz Collectors it is quite a score if, indeed, the records don’t exist.

No, No Nautiluso: Buyer Opens Claim With eBay

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A couple of readers have already pointed this out in various comments: The feedback is starting to come in on Nautiluso and it is not very promising. One buyer has issued two feedback reports, stating the same thing: “Records never delivered from Oct. 16 purchase . Have opened claim with eBay.” Both of these claims were for classical records, but the notes are ominous, as is the fact that so far there has been zero feedback from the huge jazz auction we were watching: Nothing at all. If you go back to our original report on this alleged Jazz Vinyl Collection, we had pinpointed about 75 records, in pristine condition, all among the rarest of the rare in the world of jazz collectibles: Jackie McLean on Ad-Lib, Tina Brooks True Blue, Hutta Hipp on Blue Note, and many, many more. We were somewhat skeptical and many visitors to Jazz Collector

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Catching Up: Mobley & the $1,000 Bin, Boyd, Zoot

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In my panic over eBay’s glitch yesterday, I tried a bunch of different searches to see how I might be able to alternatively maneuver through the jazz records. I may not have found a smooth alternative, but I did find a lot of pretty nice records for sale, many of which closed last night. Here are some of the interesting ones:

Hank Mobley, Soul Station, Blue Note 4031. This was an original pressing with the West 63rd Street address and it was offered by the seller roverd-90, who has been putting up some very nice jazz vinyl lately. This one was listed in M- condition for both the record and the cover. It sold for $1,232, so welcome, again, to the $1,000 bin. According to our calculations, this is the fourth time this record will have surpassed $1,000 in the Jazz Collector Price Guide.

Rocky Boyd, Ease It, Jazztime 001. This was an original pressing, the record features

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A Disaster on eBay?

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Please tell me this problem is only happening to me. For many years I’ve had a very specific search for jazz records. It was quite simple: Records, Jazz, 33 RPM. Typically, there would be 300 or so pages of 50 items each during any given week, 15,000 or so items. This was where I would browse and where I would sort and search. This morning I clicked onto my bookmark and, suddenly, without warning, it was GONE! The search took me directly to the overall records category — 6,400 pages and 320,000 items, most of which I could care less about. I went back several times to try to get my original search back and, nope, no way, it is not there. I went back to the eBay home page and tried to find it and, nope, no way, it was gone — no way to search through the jazz records, or to list the jazz records separately as I always have. I did do a search with the word jazz and it narrowed the list down to 22,000 items, but it included 78s and 45s and all other categories of jazz, and there was no way I felt comfortable that this would have all of the 12-inch jazz records I would have seen under my traditional search. Please tell me that I’m doing something wrong and eBay hasn’t made a monumental error in how it lists jazz records. Please, please, please. If that is not the case, and eBay has really made this change in how it lists jazz records, it could be a disaster to those of us who have come to value eBay as a means to both buy and sell records. It would take away the efficiency of what we do and the fun and the sense of community. What could they possibly be thinking?

In the Mood for Some Vintage Jazz? Check this Out

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Are you guys familiar with the Web site Wolfgang’s Vault? Among other things, they purchase the rights to older concerts and make them available for downloads (for a price) or just for a listen while you’re online. I mention them because they have acquired rights to a bunch of concerts from the Newport Jazz Festival and have posted a couple of dozen on the site already. As I type this I am listening to the Horace Silver Quintet playing Sister Sadie from July 3, 1959. The clarity of the recording is fantastic.  They also have Dizzy, Monk, The MJQ, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Oscar Peterson and others from the same concert. I’ve listened to some of the Monk and some of the Blakey (“Moanin'”) and the sound quality was equally good. This is definitely worth your time to check out.

For Blue Note, More Prestige Than Prestige

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Here are some nice records we’ve been watching. Each of these will be added to the Jazz Collector Price Guide.

Phil Woods, Pairing Off, Prestige 7046. This looked to be a beautiful copy of an extremely nice record and it was graded in M- condition for both the vinyl and the cover. The price was $344.90, which actually seems pretty low to us. By comparison, for example, look at this record: The Magnificent Thad Jones Volume 3, Blue Note 1546. This was an original West 63rd Street pressing from a reputable seller. The record was in VG+ condition, at best, for the vinyl and VG condition for the cover. The price was $800. Is there really that big a gap

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On EBay: A Few From Impulse

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We’ve been very busy with eBay the past couple of weeks — putting records on eBay is what we often do when we are procrastinating from other work, so this would be the evidence that we’ve been in heavy-duty procrastination mode. Anyway, our neurosis is your gain: This week we’ve had 70 items on eBay, several of which closed yesterday, many more of which close today, and a few more of which close tomorrow. Part of what we have up there now is a nice batch of Impulse LPs we’ve either pulled from our own collection, or pulled from the collection we purchased in Trenton back in May. Here are a couple of examples:

Archie Shepp, Four For Trane, Impulse 71. This is an original orange label pressing in nice VG+ condition. It is closing later today and is currently at $40.  Also from the same batch is this:

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