discogs marketplace?

I had a potential buyer ask me if I'd "just sell directly through PayPal" instead of Discogs. Why? If he buys my record, I'm the one that pays Discog's fee. What am I missing here?

btw I asked him, and he didn't answer.

He wanted you to delist it from Discogs and just sell it to him directly through PayPal. Used to happen to me on eBay a lot, can save both parties money. Also the opening move in like half a dozen different scams, so.

xp @ brim

no not exactly, i guess i'm just saying that i find it fun to find names for perceived minor gradations between the more official goldmine designations, mostly in my head or between friends. just dumb nerd stuff.

A buyer talked me into selling direct through paypal at a discount equal to Discogs' fee. He seemed serious and reasonable, so I went along with it. Having never occurred to me at the time that I could have gotten scammed, I guess I got lucky, since it was a fairly expensive LP. Now I doubt I'd do it having read enough horror stories.

Why would they scam you after making the effort to lower the price by 10% - they‘d just scam you if they felt like it.

I’ve had a couple of wierd discogs/posting issues over the last year.

- One person bought a relatively expensive record from me, but from the tracking I could see it was waiting for them in the post office, I kept contacting them through Discogs and through their email account by just constantly got blanked and eventually it got returned to me.

- I sent another record to Israel in November, after a month or so the buyer asked where it was, and looking at the tracking it had arrived in Israel but then the trail went cold. After another month I was able to get compensation from the Post Office and refund them. End of story I thought… Last weekend, 6 months after sending it I get a slighly bent parcel which looks like it has sat in a puddle for a while with a sticker saying 'address unknown' on it. Thankfully because the record was in a plastic sleeve and the bending was only on the cover it’s not actually in too bad a shape.

My local record shop has put his inventory up as his "collection" on discogs, but asks that you email him directly to purchase. It's a little awkward, because he's obviously cutting discogs out.

Classy, cuts out paying anything to Discogs who are promoting his business and gives buyer no protection when things go wrong.

Why would they scam you after making the effort to lower the price by 10% - they‘d just scam you if they felt like it.

The discount is the pretext for getting you to do the transaction off of Discogs, and once you agree to that the scope for ripping you off expands. Sure, some people just want to save $10-20 by cutting out Discogs, which is also lame but in a different way.

- One person bought a relatively expensive record from me, but from the tracking I could see it was waiting for them in the post office, I kept contacting them through Discogs and through their email account by just constantly got blanked and eventually it got returned to me.

If I was insanely rich it'd be fun to be a Discogs seller and do stuff like ship 5,000 copies of a record to somebody when they bought it from me. And be like "sorry, my bad... you can keep them." Or pay the artist to deliver the record to them in person.

it's a brand new economy out there

I know ultra-hardcore record collectors who are so secretive about their collecting that they are reticent to even share or discuss what records they have with other collectors, out of fear that it will affect the marketplace if word of what they're buying & collecting gets around. (I think this is insane but w/e.) I wonder if thats a motivation for some buyers taking a transaction off discogs?

I don't think so, because there's no public record available of your Discogs buying history. Furthermore, once you've completed a purchase, the item won't automatically be added to your collection - you have to do that manually.

a lot of record collectors are buttheads

I mean, if I'm hanging or gossiping at a record show with people that I like but who I know to be ruthless vultures, then yeah I might hold back a bit on what I'm trying to scoop up that I think is underrated or slept on, esp. if it's uncommon to find.

on the other hand, the stuff I think is underrated is usually cheap and neglected, so I go on at great length trying to convince people to check it out.

xxp i was thinking about the thing on discogs where you can see the recent purchase history of a release, how often its been bough & for how much, but i dunno yeah maybe im overthinking it

<q>This happens when people die.</q>

I did wonder, but the seller keeps getting positive (and negative) feedback on a regular basis

Let’s try that again:

This happens when people die.

I did wonder, but the seller keeps getting positive (and negative) feedback on a regular basis

OK, I mean *buyer* not seller here.

since i'm already making a weekly trip to the post office (kinda long story but it's in service of a friend in need), i figured i might as well list some things again and incorporate any deliveries into my weekly shipment.

well, yesterday i listed a rather obscure teeny-bopper rockabilly-lite kinda 45. it had never sold before on discogs and i made the mistake of not checking elsewhere online to see if there was any heat on it.

so i put it up for $30 w/ the best offer option, since it was a bit beat up.

sold in under a minute to a guy in germany.

whoops.

honestly though, the thing was just sitting around collecting dust. it's not even a cool record imo. so let the guy get a deal, right? good for him. more sellers should really let other people score now and then.

I don't think so, because there's no public record available of your Discogs buying history.

Can't you just click on the corresponding item number on the feedback page? If feedback is left, anyone looking can see what you've bought and sold

you're confusing what you can see of your own feedback when you're logged in vs. what others see

Re: letting folks have a deal, OTM. I try to always list at the lowest price in the interest of selling the damn things, and sometimes I way undercut just in hopes it will spark a little deflation. I can’t believe what some records are selling for — it’s enough to make you want to start a bootleg label.

I totally agree with this! If it hurts you none, why not let something go for a reasonable price?

I'm friends with an older guy that doesn't do computers. Occasionally he'll run across something valuable enough that he knows it should go online instead of trading in at the local shop. I'll sell it for him through my Discogs account (the only time I bother to sell stuff, I figure it builds up a good rating in case I ever do decide to sell my own collection). I'll generally price it high and bump it down a little every two weeks. Because we're not in a hurry I feel I'm getting him the best possible $$$.

The only time I've personally sold something was a Goodwill find that I paid $2 for. The Age of Flying High by Frankie Zhivago Young, a small press reggae album from the 70's, NM. I thought I was listing it absurdly high at $575 and it sold within hours. It was a strange mixture of glee and regret.

Yeah but that might be the highest it's gone for on pretty much anywhere in the last 10 years, so nice going honestly.

My fave Discogs experience (forgive me if I’ve told it before) was when I had a stack of a quite valuable 80s private press single ... found 6-7 copies in a thrift store near where the artist grew up. I listed the worst copy and sold it instantly, jacked up the price and put another up. I got another buy... and it was the artist! I didn’t accept his payment, we chatted a bit — he was looking for a copy for his son. I yanked the listing and just gave him the rest of them — I’d already made about 1000% profit on the one single, so what the hell. In exchange he gave me a copy of his Collected Works limited CD set, plus another couple discs he’d done more recently. Both of us walked away thinking we’d done excellently well, the best kind of transaction.

beautiful!

sometimes I way undercut just in hopes it will spark a little deflation

Why would anyone do this? Not everyone who sells on Discogs is a) a scoundrel, b) a ruthless flipper, or c) financially solvent enough to sell records below market value. A lot of sellers are selling records from their own personal collection to pay their bills. Especially now, with so many record stores only operating online, this seems like a dick move tbh. Some of us (yes, like me) rely on Discogs for a large portion of our income and if some rich guy is willing to pay a certain amount for a rare Blue Note, what harm is there in listing that record for what it’s worth? I don’t get it.

1. it's literally called a marketplace, people are free to list things at any price for whatever reason. of those many reasons, "i'm pricing this a little lower on a whim so somebody who loves this can have a bargain" >>>> "i'm going to list this at an exorbitant price because making anything less than 20% above what the highest historical price was is unacceptable to me"

2. you seem to be missing the point that sometimes people sell records for reasons other than (or in addition to) money, and moreover that sometimes a little generosity goes a long way, e.g. in bolstering your reputation as a seller and encouraging buyers to return.

also hardcore dilettante that's a great story !

bolstering your reputation as a seller and encouraging buyers to return.

I do this by slightly undergading records so buyers are pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed and I don't have to deal with the hassle that is returns / refunds

lol, says the guy who "never leaves positive feedback for buyers".

you're a dick, dude.

I hope I am personally responsible for undercutting your jacked up sale prices

"i'm going to list this at an exorbitant price because making anything less than 20% above what the highest historical price was is unacceptable to me I don't want to sell it, unless you're willing to give me loads of money. See that bloke up there? His is cheaper..."

I don't "jack up" prices. My prices are competitive and my feedback rating reflects this. But I'm not gonna sell a rare $400 private press psych LP for ten bucks because I'm feeling philanthropic or whatever, and frankly I call bullshit on anyone who might claim on a messageboard that they have ever done so

I think that's a pretty extreme take on this premise. When I list records I'm unfamiliar with and I see the available copies listed at sums twice the highest recorded sale to date, I have to wonder if there's some kind of arms race among sellers that ratchets up the price. There's one guy who has a lot of salsa records who does this, then every other seller follows suit. After a while when I'm sitting on the same copy and I see his haven't moved either I end up going back and re-pricing them closer to what they sold for last.

When I see those way-higher-than-maximum-sold prices, I tend to think: hmm, there's someone who took a punt a long time ago, when the sales hadn't yet got going, who hasn't been back to check/review since. I review and discount all unsold stock after six months, which allows me to take an occasional punt with an optimistic price, then steadily nudge it down until it finds its right level.

I came across a weird dub techno 12" that seems to be 'worth' about $125 bucks. The highest sold price is $183. There is a seller in the US who has a copy for $140. I could have listed mine at 120, the suggested price, less than the suggested price (below Median value), or I could price my copy that I have no desire to sell for $165, making that other copy in the US look good at $140. Once it sells for $140, then my copy for $165 is the cheapest you can get with $4 shipping. Otherwise you're paying more than that for shipping + 3-4 week wait time for the record to arrive. I don't need to sell this record, but if history has taught me anything, it's that there are dudes in Norway and Japan with a shit load of money and they're willing to buy some dumb shit with their money.

fuck rich people tbh, lower all prices

fuck all prices, lower rich people

xp that doesn’t make sense, but whatever *falls and breaks hip*

I felt weird selling an OG pressing of Tom Perry’s wildflowers three figures recently. It’s a shitty pressing. Maybe it tracks better on their mega bucks system idk. Feels like i should have just destroyed it.

for three figures

Yeah I saw somebody on Craigslist posting that Petty LP for $400 or so and I was like “lol another Craigslist crazy”, then looked up the going rate for it and cringed

Has it not been reissued/repressed?

Petty's entire catalog (with and without the Heartbreakers) was reissued on vinyl in two giant boxes in 2014-2015, but only as boxes, I don't think you could buy individual LPs.

This is a whole nother ball o wax, but there’s something weird with the rights to Wildflowers and his estate. OG copies of Wildflowers have sold for ~$1000 on eBay. The recent box set has cooled prices on Wildflowers a little bit (I had trouble selling a Kevin Gray 2009 pressing for what I thought it deserved) esp because the cut is highly praised... but shitty Russian bootlegs are selling for ~$150. I expect it to become widely available at some point & the whole price structure will collapse.

I've been having a bit of a weird experience as a Discogs buyer: I ordered a couple of CDs from a guy in Colorado on May 8, and today the USPS tracking info showed that my package had been delivered to an address in Pittsburgh (I live in New Hampshire). when I asked the seller if he could look into the situation, he said he'd mixed up two other orders for that date and that he's hoping mine isn't another one. in his next message he said he'd contacted a buyer from Pittsburgh, who told him that they haven't received their package either. I'm not sure if he addressed the packages wrong or assigned the wrong tracking numbers, but either way I don't understand why one package was reported as delivered. the seller said he could either give me a refund or attempt to reclaim the package for me. I figure I'll wait and see if I receive anything by the end of the week (even if it's someone else's package), and if not I'll opt for the refund. I don't have any reason to believe he's been dishonest with me, but he must have bungled things pretty badly that day if three or more buyers are involved in the mix-up.