For the Price Guide: Webster Young, Trane, Hank

1 comment

We haven’t been keeping up with the Jazz Collector Price Guide as often as we’d like, but we have a few items we’ve been watching that we’ll enter this weekend. If we get moving, we could get up to 4,000 records into the database within the next couple of weeks, which would be something of a milestone. Anyway, here are a few we’ve been watching:

Webster Young, For Lady, Prestige 7106. I’ve always loved this record, some great tenor playing by Paul Quinichette. This one was in VG+ condition, both record and cover, and sold for $296.

John Coltrane, Ballads, Impulse 32. This was an original mono pressing with the orange label and the gatefold cover. It was in M- condition, both record and cover. It sold for $113.50.

Hank Mobley, Roll Call, Blue Note 4058. This was a nice original pressing with the West

Read more

This Week on Ebay: Miles, Clifford, Trane

No comments

We haven’t been very active selling on eBay lately: Just life getting in the way. However, this week we found some time to clean and post a bunch of items. It’s a mixed bag, but there are a few nice ones, including:

Miles Davis, Blue Haze, Prestige 7054. This is an original New York yellow label Prestige. It’s in VG+ condition, and sounds quite nice. We put a start price of $30 and it’s already received a bid, so we expect there to be some action.

We also put up a nice-sounding original copy of Clifford Brown, Jam Session, Emarcy 36002. This also has a start price of $30. It’s a great record, with a lot of positive energy. 

As you may have noticed on the Jazz Collector site, we’ve been going through some old Downbeat Magazines, looking for collectibles (we’re even giving one away). We’ve put a few up for sale in our eBay story, and we put a very interesting one up for auction yesterday. It is:

Read more

Cole Porter’s Last Words

No comments

I’ve been going through old Downbeat Magazines with the idea of getting rid of some of them, although I love to have these as collectibles because they are filled with interesting tidbits that you can’t find anywhere else. Here’s one from the Downbeat of November 19, 1964. It’s from a small article on the death of Cole Porter, who passed away on Oct. 15, 1964 at 71 years of age. The only people at his bedside when he died were two valets, who had worked for him for six years. His last words were spoken to a publicist about two hours before he died. They were, “Don’t leave me.” Sad. If you would like to purchase a copy of this magazine, I have one for sale at The Jazz Collector Store on eBay. You can just click the Items for Sale tab at the top of this page to find it.

Free Collectible: 1964 Downbeat Featuring Miles Davis Blindfold Test

2 comments

We’ve been looking through our collection for something interesting for our next give-away contest and this is what we’ve come up with: A copy of Downbeat Magazine from June 18, 1964, featuring a really interesting Blindfold Test with Miles Davis. I’ll give you a few teasers from the interview:

On Eric Dolphy, Mary Ann from Far Cry, New Jazz 8270: “That’s got to be Eric Dolpy — nobody else could sound that bad! The next time I see him I’m going to step on his foot. You print that. I think he’s ridiculous.” Sadly, Dolphy passed away just two months later.

On Cecil Taylor: “Take it off! That’s some sad shit, man.” (Although, of course, Downbeat did not print the word ‘shit’).

There was one track that Miles actually liked and rated with five stars. That was:

Read more

The Resurgence of the Resurgence

4 comments

A few weeks ago we decided to try something new on the site: We put up a record for sale at what we thought was a fairly low price. The record was The Resurgence of Dexter Gordon, Jazzland 929S. This was (and still is) an original stereo pressing. The record and the cover are both in VG++ condition. We put a $25 tag on it, figuring someone would jump on it quickly. But no one did, and still no one has. Part of the reason we were doing this to see if our new e-commerce plug-in was working. We still don’t know. So here’s what we’re doing. We’re lowering the price of the record to $15. If you’re interested, click here and follow the link. We have just the one copy. Once it’s gone, that’s it. Hopefully someone will be interested in a bargain, and hopefully the system will work.

Ebay Watch: Prices are Down, Another Cycle?

10 comments

If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines on eBay waiting for prices to come down, now may be the time to jump in. I don’t have any hard data, but I’ve been watching eBay almost every day for a while and it’s clear that prices for jazz records are down quite a bit from where they were 12 months ago, six months ago, even three months ago. I see it less in the highest-end collectibles, and more in the second-tier records, which either are not selling at all or are selling at lower prices with fewer bidders. I’ve seen these cycles come and go many times before and just when you think, uh-oh, the bottom’s going to drop out of the market, there’s a resurgence. And, given the state of the worldwide economy, it should be no surprise that prices of collectibles would go down. Still, there’s always the concern: Will the market come back again this time, or is there something more fundamental going on? What do you think?

Ebay Auction From Jazz Record Center

No comments

I’m on an email list for the Jazz Record Center in New York and they ping me every time they have a new auction on eBay. I got such a ping the other day. They have some interesting records and autographs on eBay now, closing next week. You can click here for a peak. This is not necessarily something we would do all the time, but if you’re posting some interesting items on eBay, feel free to let us know, either by commenting on the Jazz Collector site or by sending an email to al(at)jazzcollector.com.

Today on Ebay: Fuller, Parlan and McCoy (For Sale)

2 comments

SHHHHHHHHHH. It’s so quiet on eBay today we wouldn’t want to disturb any of the sleeping buyers and sellers. I have a sense that the economy is starting to wreak a little havoc on the jazz collectibles market — not on the high-end collectibles — but in the mid-tier. We’ll see. These things tend to go in cycles. Perhaps it’s a good time to be buying. Anyway, it is quite quiet on eBay today, but there are a few things worth noting, including:

Curtis Fuller, Bone and Bari, Blue Note 1572. This is an original pressing in M- condition, both record and cover, and it features an autograph by Curtis Fuller. Not to mention the presence of Sonny Clark on piano. The opening bid price for this record is about $140 and, as of now, there are no bids. In the Jazz Collector Price Guide we’ve seen this record sell for nearly $700 in M- condition without an autograph. So maybe it is a time to be buying.

Read more