Tag: Jazz Vinyl on eBay

Going Up . . . Up . . . Up . . .

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Here’s some interesting jazz vinyl auctions that closed this week.

We need a new explanation for this one: Horace Silver, Song For My Father, Blue Note 4185. Admittedly this is a great, classic record and this was an original mono pressing in near mint condition for both the record and the cover. Why is there a new explanation needed? Conventional wisdom has said that because of the initial popularity of this record, there has always been a relatively abundant supply of original pressings in decent condition. Conventional wisdom may be changing. This particular copy sold for $405. Our previous high for this in the Jazz Collector Price Guide was $334 and, at the time, we considered that to be an aberration. What’s this?

And this? Gene Ammons, Blue Gene, Prestige 7146. This was from the same seller and it was also in near mint condition for the record and the cover. You’d normally expect this in the $40-$50 range, maybe a drop higher because of the condition. This copy sold for $164.50.

This next one got quite a high price, but not a surprising one:

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Jazz Vinyl on eBay: Jackie-ing

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Ouch, this one hurts: Jackie McLean, Jackie’s Pal, Prestige 7068. This is an original pressing with the New York address on the labels, deep grooves, heavy vinyl. It is listed in M- condition and looks to be in beautiful condition. The seller characterizes it as an “archival” copy. There’s more than a day left on the auction and the bidding has topped $2,000. It hurts because I too had a mint copy of this record and I loved having it in my collection but was persuaded to sell my copy about 20 years ago for $400. Now, the $400 looked like a pretty good price back then, and I’m sure it was, but that $400 is long gone and the hole in my collection is still there. Looking at this great cover now I have to believe if I’d spent five more minutes just pondering the cover, not even thinking about the music, I’d have never sold the record. The same seller is offering Jackie McLean, 4, 5 and 6, Prestige 7048. This is also an original pressing and it is also listed in M- condition for the record and the cover. There are more than four days left on this auction and the bidding has topped $500, bit the record has yet to reach the seller’s reserve price.

 

Yet Another Adventure in Jazz Collecting

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I have another story for you.
As many of you may recall, I have this oddball penchant for occasional wild gambles on eBay: Purchasing records that are not well described or, more often, buying batches of records that might contain one or two gems without having any sense of whether the listing is accurate or even feasible. I have done this maybe a couple of dozen times and it has almost always worked out to my advantage.I tried it again recently and thought I had finally met my Waterloo.
Here it is: I was recently up the country for a couple of weeks, doing work, doing fishing, some writing, a little Jazz Collector and occasionally looking at eBay. One day I was perusing the eBay listings and came upon a listing that was as follows:
Jazz Record Albums – 118 Albums from collector.
The seller had zero feedback: A complete eBay novice. In the description he noted that these records were the collection from his late stepfather, who was a CPA and accountant for musicians. It was a really strange list with a lot of non-jazz, such as Al Green and

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Jazz Vinyl Price Decline? Some Theories

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OK, I have two theories on why prices in mid-tier, i.e. non-Blue Note jazz vinyl on eBay may be down from previous levels.

1. A couple of months ago, eBay made a decision that would drive more revenue, but not necessarily enhance either the buyer’s or seller’s experience. Previously, if you did a search of jazz vinyl you would only see those items that were up for auction, plus those items that had buy-it-now prices with specific deadlines. On average, if you would do a search you would get about 20,000 to 25,000 jazz records over the course of any week. Then eBay decided it wanted to charge more for store listings and raised the price from 3 cents a month for a store listing to some listings as high as 20 cents a month. To justify this rate hike, they made all of the store listings appear on general searches for jazz records.

The result: If you do a search on 12-inch jazz records, which I did just now, you will come up

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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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Commenting on the Comments

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If you’ve been watching Jazz Collector this week, perhaps you’ve noticed a lot of the back-and-forth discussion around two of our posts: Another eBay Debate: What’s the Value of a Dealer’s Reputation, and Today on eBay, February 2, 2009, which is dealing with the provence of the Andy Warhol cover on the record, Thelonious Monk, Prestige 7053. We’re thrilled to see all of the comments — it’s what we had hoped for when we started the site. We’ve kind of stayed back ourselves, but we just posted a comment on the article regarding the eBay debate. The gist of our comment, which you can see by clicking on the article, is that the market for jazz collectibles is driven by all of the participants in the market and focusing on any one group or groups of buyers misses the point, in our opinion. In fact, we are spectacularly grateful that the music we cherish is cherished as well by so many people around the world. Face it, if the fate of jazz were strictly in the hands of the American public, it would be a sad day for all of us who love the music. As for the Monk record and the Warhol cover, I’ve kind of left it to our readers to sift through this one, since I don’t have any definitive answer on the subject. It seems as if through the discussions, however, we may have reached some fairly accurate version of the truth.