Shady scams and other silly business ideas to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors

yeah, this is true and it makes sense for most people. buy the vinyl and have a digital version. i just prefer CDs and don't have a proper audio set-up for my computer. so i don't really listen to stuff that way.

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"Why didn't I buy all 20 copies of Paul's Boutique that were sitting in the cutout bin for a year for $1.99 each?"

i've mentioned that very example on ilm more than once. strawberries in philly had tons of them in the clearance bin. i bought exactly one.

i remember multiple copies of that Dead Man soundtrack too. oof...

i remember when Grand Royal went out of business and was selling off its stuff for super low prices. i only got 2 Pizzicato Five 12"s, really should've loaded up on records.

what were some other early '90s LPs that sell for megacash now? I quickly thought of Nevermind, but unlike Paul's Boutique it was a huge seller from almost the start so it didn't build up in bargain bins.

there was that time period where the market was split between cd/cassette/vinyl with vinyl quickly diminishing and vinyl got the shortest numbers

Robbie Fulks' recent blog is a really good analog vs. digital piece that's balanced (and written by someone with real experience with both)

http://www.robbiefulks.com/blog/

"what were some other early '90s LPs that sell for megacash now?"

so many. thousands. it's a scarcity thing. i dug out a copy of the first widespread panic album from a box in the store basement last week and its an easy 100 to 200.

but really any band with any kind of following now that put out vinyl in the 80s and 90s probably has some $$$ vinyl out there. nobody bought it. or, you know, a thousand people bought it. and everyone else bought the CD.

you would also have the situation where the vinyl would only come out in one place for whatever reason. i had a dream theater album that ONLY came out in germany in 1994. stuff like that. $$$.

i remember that grand royal sale. but by the time i was even browsing it it was down to pizzicato 5 singles, and ummm.... a sean lennon album maybe? the bran van 3000 lp that didn't have "drinkin' in LA" ? you had to be real on the ball.

that most reviled of used CDs, REM's Monster, sells for a little chunk of dough iirc. Lots of stuff from that time.

this is an interview along the same lines as ums's link, although more geared toward mastering for vinyl:
http://www.roberthenke.com/interviews/mastering.html

for a lot of the european/techno/electronic releases I like, anything mastered at dubplates&mastering is pretty much guaranteed to be excellent

SO many dollar CDs that sell for a ton on vinyl. sucks to be a fan of things.

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a lot of the stuff that sells for a ton on CD now is music you would never think of in a million years. some aor rock album from the 70s reissued for five seconds in japan in 1996 and never reissued again. hundreds of dollars. again, some dollar bin record on vinyl.

Beta Band, Mogwai, Cake, Eels, Pearl Jam, Pumpkins, Yo La Tengo, National, Nick Cave, Tortoise, GbV... All that stuff that wasn't even that rare at the time was selling like crazy 5-10 years ago. It went down a bit but it always surprised me pretty regular stuff like the above went for 40, 50, 60 a pop and higher.

(first IDM wave records too)

oh and Mo'Wax/UNKLE etc. That was madness for a while

Stuff I've sold on Discogs in the past 18 months for GBP 100 or more, in descending order - 7" unless flagged otherwise:

dib cochran & the earwigs - oh baby
larry lurex - I can hear music
roy castle - record breaker
blitzkrieg bop - let's go
shina williams & his african percussionists - agboju logun (12")
the klf - chill out (LP)
dolly mixture - demonstration tapes (LP)
jonathan jr - hangin' on to you (12")
angelo & eighteen - midnight flight
smoke - dreams of dreams
queen - keep yourself alive (promo)
donna gaines (donna summer) - sally go round the roses
millionaires - never for me
georgie fame - somebody stole my thunder

and from GBP 75-99, all 7":

jungle brothers 40 below trooper
sandie jones - music of love
ya ho wha 13 - the last chant / awaken
garland green - ain't that good enough / love now pay later
gladys knight & the pips - take me in your arms and love me (promo)
nolan porter - if I could only be sure / work it out in the morning
levi jackson - this beautiful day
paul st. john - flying saucers have landed
slade - merry xmas everybody (promo sleeve)
creations - footsteps / a dream
joubert singers - stand on the word

ah man I assume this must've been the Mortonsound version if it went for that much -

blitzkrieg bop - let's go

but I love that record. Not enough to pay £200+ for it though.

40 below trooper on 7-inch is dope. i only have the 12-inch.

I got a Duster (90s band) album for cheap off Amazon or something in 2010... now it goes for $250. Found a Duster 7" in a bin at Gimme Gimme in NYC (now closed/moved) for $8 now goes for $60. Sometimes forgotten bands just explode with a sudden cult following.

Yeah, the Blitzkrieg Bop is indeed on Mortonsound, and the Jungle Brothers is the rare German 7".

Britpop/ Britrock stuff does well too: £80 if you have a vinyl copy of the Verve's first album, £35 for Pulp 12" singles etc.

Off the top of my head, '90s LPs that we sold secondhand for big money (i.e £50-£100 and upwards) over recent years at the record shop I worked at included...

Take That - Take That & Party
Spice Girls - can't remember which, but Spiceworld seems to be the bigger collectible on vinyl
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
Radiohead - OK Computer

Proving that even multi-million selling status does not preclude LP scarcity from that era. I also recall a copy of Reef's Replenish on LP selling for very good money very quickly, which surprised me as I didn't think their status warranted such value.

someone explain this service to me. i'm dumb:

https://www.diggersfactory.com/

I recall it being very hard to find vinyl in the last year or two before being completely wound down (don't remember exactly which year it was). By then the labels wouldn't accept returns of vinyl, so most stores didn't want to stock it. The labels still pressed a very small batch of 45s and LPs to coincide with a record's hoped-for chart run, and that was it. Most record stores in my area had already dropped vinyl completely by then; I had to go to indie shops to find it, and their stocks were limited. I think Tower still had a small vinyl section too, but their stores were a half hour drive away from home. I did buy quite a few now-valuable records during the waning days of the (first?) vinyl era, including the last two krakow mentioned.

xp kickstarter to press a record

i remember multiple copies of that Dead Man soundtrack too. oof...

oof indeed. this was my holy grail record til i bought a bootleg now i'm cool

Quality control on some domestic 90s Major Label vinyl was pretty iffy. I think I've told this story on here before (maybe even upthread?), but I remember my sister picking Stevie Ray Vaughan's The Sky Is Crying on vinyl (IIRC, it was his last LP to be released on vinyl stateside) on release day in '91. Back home on the turntable the record skipped numerous times, even after changing needles. She took it back the next day to exchange for another copy, but the clerk went through a few others off the rack on their system and they were all fucked the same way.

Fast Forward about 20 years: I'm in another record store with my sister, and we see them attempting to sell a couple sealed The Sky Is Cryings for $75-100* apeice. We look at each other all like "Somebody's gonna get screwed here."

*Checking discogs now, and the cheapest copy from an American dealer is a $60 used VG+ edition.

poor seller doesnt realize he's actually selling mint dogpile

I've got a bunch of vinyl from that early-to-mid 90s period (Kyuss, various hip-hop rand records, death metal) and the quality is certainly patchy. My copy of Sky Valley sounds heartbreakingly thin and weedy.

No idea what hip-hop rand records was supposed to be. A South African niche, obvs.

I have to say my OG copy of Nevermind, purchased week of release, when I was 16, still sounds heavenly.

That rules. I have an OG copy that sounds splendid as well.

super jealous of yall. my og cd is no doubt scratched to hell in a landfill somewhere with the liner notes & packaging in another landfill and the plastic case long since shattered into a million fragments.

my OG CD sounds better than the remaster imo, but it still doesn't have "Endless, Nameless" :(

woah, there were CDs without Endless Nameless?

First 50,000 iirc

Yeah, theoretically quite valuable.

My 'In Utero' doesn't have that rubbing alcohol track, but hey its rub.

It’s prolly not valuable (there’s 50,000 of them) but it’s cool to have,

I got the same when I bought it back then, no bonus track. Not valuable though

I'm always prattling on about this, but the Mobile Fidelity CD of Nevermind sounds amazing.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trntbl-wireless-turntable-review-2018-3

VNYL is back with a new TRNTBL

While it calls itself "wireless," technically this term solely refers to the fact that you don't need to mess with analog cables or outputs in order to connect to a speaker. You do still need to plug a cord into the wall to power your turntable.

https://media1.tenor.com/images/87c2a55f05fe4fa12b4730d7201f0f09/tenor.gif?itemid=4384766

Saw these photos on Twitter, laughed really hard.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfLHv27X0AAIiv8.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfLHv2zX4AAAoVZ.jpg

I don't even know what I'm looking at.

They're using pants hangers to store their records?

as a bonus, now you can store all your folded up shirts and pants in your suddenly wide open record shelves

In a shower stall, no less? (xp)

(Sorry, guess it’s just a closet; the rod threw me for a sec)