Full House and $55 for The Incredible Jazz Guitar. Perhaps these are bargains, perhaps not. The 17 percent surcharge adds to the fee and, to be fair, each of the albums has previously sold for more than $200 in the Jazz Collector Price Guide. In any case, I am now a viable, active bidder – a winning bidder — and the old familiar rush of buying records is now flowering in full bloom. I miss out on McLean’s Scene — $240, and I already own two copies — but then I buy three consecutive lots of records: These lots include Art Blakey Free For Al;  Roy Haynes We Three; For Musicians Only with Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt; Lem Winchester, Lem’s Beat; a couple of Bird LPs and a couple of more Getz LPs.  the bill for these will be about $200. I keep going: A batch of Oliver Nelson Prestige/New Jazz LPs and a few Red Garland Prestiges that I already own. Then I am bidding furiously on an interesting lot. It is a group of John Coltrane LPs and it seems that among them is a black-label copy of Giant Steps. Now, again, I have not seen these LPs and I am at a distinct disadvantage to those in the room, who have had a chance to examine the condition of the records and whether, indeed, they are original pressings. Nonetheless I press on and win this batch for $160. Again, I am rolling with adrenaline. I lose out on a batch of seven Bill Evans LPs that sells for $650, but I buy a batch of 11 Evans LPs for $80. Who knows what is in this lot? I even buy a batch of Gerry Mulligan LPs for $40, just because the price seemed right, not because I needed or wanted any of these records. Finally there were random lots of records, no titles listed, just posted as: Lot of Thirty LPs. What they heck, I figured, I’ll bid on these as well and I ended up winning one of these batches for $50. Who knows what will arrive in the mail. My final purchase was actually the only thing I really wanted in the auction: The Tal Farlow Mosaic CD Boxed Set, which I got for $90, plus 17 percent, plus shipping.

Whew.

It was quite a roll for awhile. Today I got the bill in the mail. More than $1,200, including the surcharge and shipping charge. I guess my Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown will be put on hold for a while. Yet again.