Post your Discogs user profile for discussion/bragging/desperate attempt to bond with like minds

but yeah that's kind of a pet peeve of mine - finding something you really want at a good price and then having to read LP1 ONLY IN A BROWN PAPER BAG

just curious - if you bought something with this description, would you expect for the cover to be completely split down one side?

Media Condition: Very Good (VG)
Sleeve Condition: Good Plus (G+)
Some noise, mostly at beginning of side B, good fidelity. Priced accordingly. Ring wear on jacket, and edges. Inner sleeve included.

what about this one?

Media Condition: Very Good (VG)
Sleeve Condition: Good Plus (G+)
Some minor noise, plays well.

because i had my first ever bad discogs transaction a few weeks ago. besides some weird delays on their ends and no communication/responses whatsover from them, the main thing was that two of the records covers were completely split on the bottom side. i guess technically that falls under "G+" but it would be nice to call that out in the description?

rather than say anything negative, i have elected to just not leave any feedback. i am afraid they will send me more broken record covers in retaliation

but what's baffling is that they have a 100.0% rating across 450 ratings, which makes me think either i was insanely unlucky in my dealings with them, or that they beat up their downvoters

that sucks. hope it wasn't anything too expensive. I had something similar happen to me with a copy of Underworld's Oblivion With Bells - here was the description:

Media Condition: Very Good Plus (VG+)
Sleeve Condition: Very Good Plus (VG+)
clean discs. Sleeve is VG+ with slight edge wear along openings. Spine is excellent, and front/back panels are excellent.

in reality, the sleeve looked like it had water damage and there was some crackle & pop throughout, particularly on Side D (which is my favorite side). maybe a good cleaning will fix it but who knows. didn't wanna leave bad feedback though because it was appropriately priced for the condition it actually was in

yeah, the records in question were band on the run ($6 CA) and beatles '65 ($10 CA). and both of them do sound really nice!

that's a bummer, and it certainly would have been nice for them to mention it, but i think ultimately they're not wrong so :/

what might make you feel better is to buy a couple new white disco sleeves and store the LPs in there, with the record cover "displayed" in front inside of the clear outer sleeve (does that make sense?)

i do that with some of the flimsier brazilian / african record jackets i have and always find it makes for a nice crisp presentation in those cases where the original sleeve doesn't really "support" the LP y'know

yep, yeah that's what i'm doing! it's ultimately not that big of a deal, and i mainly just care about the LP quality, so i'm good there! i'm trying to pretend that i've always owned a sweet copy of both of those records, but recently, as i was carrying them down the stairs to show to my friend on my stoop ("hey check out this LP Band on the Run, as well as "Beatles '65!", i tripped and both of the bottom edges slipped as we tumbled down into the doorway. oh well, at least they still sound good!

behold neighbor, i am a proud owner of this wings record for many years, see how i hold it in my fing — d'oh!!!!

*glumly demotes sleeve condition to G+*

alright this Dead Skeletons album is pretty tight

They're great, they sure achieve their aim of making propulsive music to meditate to. Don't sleep on their singles, I wish they had something new!

The Psychic Paramount are great but Laddio Bollocko (feat drummer Blake Fleming) were the absolute tits and unfairly passed over at the time for bands like Don Cab.

oof, got another one

Comments: Vinyl looks great, only a few storage and shuffle marks, no effect on sound. Labels display very bright colours, almost as if unplayed. Sleeve in near mint condition, practically no wear except for the front lower left edge, barely noticeable.

the vinyl was visibly scuffed up and there was audible surface noise throughout the entire thing, especially on the second record. do I just not understand what "VG+" means? I get that when buying used online there's some inherent risk there but still obnoxious when it's a holy grail type record you have to import while the $4 VG copy of the first Starcastle record I got actually sounds pretty much perfect

nah that's total bullshit, blatant lazy overgrading. I'd return it.

was considering that but it was from the UK and I'm in the US...the shipping is half the cost

harsh. I'd ask for a partial refund, then.

you know what's strange about this, of all the records I've ever bought online I've only had 3 that were clearly worse than their marked condition and all 3 of them were Underworld records

Let u know how i get on with the pink Rez VG+ i just ordered, lol. Their fancy new lithograph print of the thing pushed me!

I don't sell much, but more than one feedback thanked me for "conservative grading". i understand VG+ to mean looking and or sounding just a little worse than right out of the shrinkwrap (i.e, NM).

I've never been clear on how pressings that might be noisy to begin with factor into it.

what record was it?

haha, I nearly bought the pink Rez 12" this morning too! I have the official Cowgirl / Rez 12" so don't really need the pink rez, but that print made me want it. I also need a new copy of the Dirty 12". My copy looks perfect but sounds horrible.

also, on the UW merch tangent, could they have worse merch? The absolutely garbage "graphic design" they've been using is worse than amateur. Such a shame considering their connection to Tomato. I'm stunned at how incredibly shit their merch has become. Anyway, the music is what matters.

i like the pink tee! 25 squids plus shipping to Canada tho.............nah

it's Barking, sucks because that one is super limited, one of those albums where most available copies are shrinkwrapped ones for 5x MSRP. I guess the good thing is it's one of those albums where you can live with some noise since it's not exactly a subtle record. the only track it really bothers me on is "Louisiana". idk maybe I'll take it to the cleaner and see if that helps

totally agreed on the UW merch thing, it's weird b/c they have so many cool sleeve designs, like the gatefold OWB is breathtaking. then on the other hand you have Drift with a very visible Photoshop fail on the cover, and the boxset itself which just omits the photo entirely. like LCD Soundsystem's American Dream even when the thing's in your hands you can't believe that's the actual art and not a placeholder

Only just got around to starting this. Fun. Frustrating.

https://www.discogs.com/user/carrosdd/collection

― cooldix, Monday, 27 April 2020 16:19 (six months ago) link

I was looking back and feel bad I overlooked this collection. Great stuff! Lots of taste overlap. Some things jump out as "ilxor albums" to certain degrees.

Brings to mind how a few years ago I tried to buy Blue Nile's Hats off of a friend's MOM of all people. Not that it's unthinkable but I sincerely doubt she'd thought about that album in 20 years until that point. It made no sense sitting there in that bin of theirs. An industry friend gave it to her, she said. Still wouldn't give it up! That album has never really grabbed me the way I was hoping it would, but I thought I might come around sometime and it is pretty collectable AND this copy was mint. Oh well.

I still don't "get" The Blue Nile but ofc I have Rooftops in my collection due to ILM, found it cheap sometime in the late 00s

see also: Studio, Kelly Polar

I LOVE Studio. I very much get that one. But I don't "have", alas.

Thanks Evan! I’m not a prolific poster here, but I’ll admit to copping plenty of ilxor-bait - Blue Nile, Alabaster Deplume, 75 Dollar Bill, Gigi Masin, ECM stuff, for starters…

No Studio yet! But I keep buying D. Lissvik solo projects to fill that yawning gap.

Well Gigi Masin is another tip top favorite for me as well. Sometimes the hype is super justified!

OK getting a little worried about the market; worried that record shopping is going to be ridiculous moving forward.

I was looking at my collection on the discogs app which has the nice little feature of showing not only min/med/max prices of each album, but also shows you the price of the latest sale. Kind of neat so I kept clicking each one out of curiosity. Was a bit shocked to see that for like ~85%(?) of them the latest sale price matched (or was extremely close to) the literal max sale value. Example after example... it was incredible. Takeaway is that the averages prices for everything in every genre across the board are going to go way up. Brick and mortar stores that price based on discogs as gospel are going to just be silly... everything 2nd hand is going to be like $50 and up, but not because they're delusional but because they're savvy. The only stores that will be worth going to are the ones that are savvy but actually mindful about the important difference between online marketplace and local clientele.

We'll see.

Yay for my collection value though?

Yeah, the second hand vinyl market is crazy right now. The crazy and immediate price gouging when an artist dies or breaks up really bothers me. Even when i'm not adding stuff to my collection on discogs, I notice a daily increase in 'value'.

I've noticed that too, there are a lot of fairly obscure 70's and 80's albums that were routinely going for $20-30 back in 2018 but are now upwards of $70 and I'm starting to lose hope that reasonably priced copies are ever gonna show up again. otoh maybe the end of the pandemic will get people away from their stereos and quell the demand.

Basically, stuff that’s not common as dirt is going crazy. We’ve been asking “are we in a vinyl bubble” for at least a decade now, but this rapid inflation does feel like a huge bubble.

yep everything is a $20 record now, minimum

unless you go to stores that actually have a clue how inventory works. one of my local stores is actually looking for a bigger place!

I wonder if the "price history" tool is doing more harm than good. Sellers seem to be overreacting to the high price, thinking "well if one person paid that much maybe someone else will", or more accurately "maybe someone will pay 20%-50% more". I noticed the Sparks LP Hello Young Lovers was listed around $80 or so, then someone paid $110 for it, and now the only copy is listed at $250. cool economic ecosystem you got there

I mean that's what I was talking about, however the shocking development is that the higher price IS the accurate market price according to recent sales. That's why I'm begrudgingly forced to revise my long held view on these opportunistic vinyl sellers from "delusional" to "savvy" until this current value spike bubble bursts. Really difficult to fault someone for selling something at a price a buyer is willing to pay. Problem is we're at the beginning of that now. Median prices haven't updated yet because the mass rise in value is only a few sales deep on the majority of the examples in my own collection. But it's the case across the board, across genre. Vintage market looks like it's going to get very expensive once everyone catches on if sold prices continue to skyrocket, and all we'll be left with is the FOMO competition to buy the latest limited reissue or new release before it sells out and subsequently forever live at an inflated resale value.

well two things I suspect are driving that right now are 1) the pandemic, which is forcing people to take up insular and weird collectors' hobbies and 2) that lacquer factory burning down, which seems to have caused a shortage of new records, and from what I've heard it's taking albums up to 3 additional months to get pressed because there's such a backlog right now. which means things there's potentially a big market for can't get repressed - I can think of a lot of Bandcamp shit that would quickly sell out an additional run of 1000 or whatever but they're so backed up it's just not worth doing at the moment. so existing copies just go for 3-4x the original price and occasionally even sell which puts dollar signs in everyone's eyes.

Vintage market looks like it's going to get very expensive once everyone catches on if sold prices continue to skyrocket, and all we'll be left with is the FOMO competition to buy the latest limited reissue or new release before it sells out and subsequently forever live at an inflated resale value.

this feels otm. lately ive caught myself being tempted to pull the trigger on stuff for more than i want to pay, under the assumption that 5-10 years from now the market is only going to be more insane

...which of course becomes a self fulfilling prophecy

Yeah I've been resisting the urge to recalibrate what I find to be a comfortable price to pay for certain things. Too many variables to consider- rarity vs. general inflation vs. the market (covered above) vs. condition etc.

end of the day this is an pretty hot market right now so it seems inevitable that a bunch of pressing plants are gonna open up to ride the wave and perhaps even start undercutting each other. it might take a few years but I feel like there's too much money to be made right now for things to just...stay like this

Hello I still use discogs for cataloging my collection, indeed discogs still exists and has not imploded.

Come, look at all the plastic and junk I own

then show me your junk...

...

Brick and mortar stores that price based on discogs as gospel are going to just be silly... everything 2nd hand is going to be like $50 and up, but not because they're delusional but because they're savvy. The only stores that will be worth going to are the ones that are savvy but actually mindful about the important difference between online marketplace and local clientele.

this has absolutely held true, two years later. I'm finding the baseline price for your bog-standard 80's albums to be at a minimum $20, sometimes higher. Of course even new albums now seem to be priced at $39.99 half the time.

yep a used Gaucho was $20 at my local been-around-since-the-70s store the other day, we joked about it

it's probably gone now

i bought an album from a record store for $35 AUD yesterday that is normally $100+ when I see it at fairs - i think the store owner looked it up on discogs and saw “marketplace: 2 available from $30” so priced it based on that - if he had bothered to click through, the cheap one was badly damaged and the next one was $120

mentioned because discogs-influenced pricing at record stores is soooo boring and takes the fun out of it - so on the odd occasion a record slips through, it feels like a win

shops in more savvy markets (like the bay area) definitely price under discogs and ebay prices on the whole because they aren't stupid. I spent a lot of time in Rapid City SD over the last two years though and there were two record shops there; both with surprisingly good stock considering the location, but one in particular absolutely went with the highest prices on discogs for fucking everything. I mean, 80's issue Siouxsie records (which admittedly are kind of hard to find now) for $65.

I've been a little disappointed in my old boss from the shop I used to work at - he prices stuff 5-10 above discogs median with the thought that he can reduce aged inventory if need be and get away with better margins in the meantime, but it's deflating for consumers like me that are hip to actual going rates. Like, yes median discogs + shipping = comparable cost in the end but should go without saying you reward your in-store shoppers the ability to save hypothetical shipping fees to thereby facilitate more frequent visits. He's always been a bit too meticulous about margins at the detriment to a bigger picture strategy.

I will say that overall I've seen a little downtick in resale sold prices amongst stuff in my collection compared to my posts upthread from a couple years ago when people were pulling the trigger on really high sticker prices across the board. Hopefully things level off a little. Speaking about 2nd hand stuff specifically.