discogs marketplace?

tbh if the writing is neat enough it rarely phases me, especially when it's pen. it's the scrawling, inconsiderate marker writing that really bums me out.

i have a don cherry record on MPS which i bought in france from a shop that had acquired the collection of a recently-deceased music journalist. the liner notes have neat underlining and there were french translations of words and phrases scribbled into the margins -- to me that's just part of the provenance, you know? like i wouldn't consider the jacket to be VG

I got a digipak in the mail on Friday with sleeve condition described as "NM" that had clearly been stored in a fishtank since it was purchased, but for five bucks who cares

if it's not a rare album I kinda like the writing on the jacket - I have XTC & Gordon Lightfoot records with favorite songs & lyrics circled in the insert, a bunch of Utopia records with the previous owner's name written on the front, some King Crimson LPs with "Stefano" written in Sharpie...its kinda cool to feel some sort of connection with the previous owner. but it should knock the price down a buck or two, come on

There’s a ton of records circulating in my hometown with PICKLES scrawled across the front covers in sharpie.

I remember buying this on Discogs and being surprised when it arrived because the listing hadn't disclosed anything about writing on the cover. In most cases, I'd be a little mad about it, but I legit laughed out loud when I opened the box this one was in. Boss move, "P.M."

https://i.imgur.com/5ctzvb2.jpg

lmao that got me

that's "mint" in the other sense

hahahahaha

Someone sold me a sealed NM/NM copy of the new Bicep 3LP and 2 of the 4 corners were bent / creased. I let it go but I wanted to leave neutral feedback since the description didn't say anything about it and the box it was shipped in did not cause the damage. Complaining about bent corners is a bit picky but it did irritate me.

I don’t mind wear on jackets, but stains are kinda a deal breaker for me and sorry I feel like a dick but ppls names and writing creeps me out kinda :-/

I guess stories like this emphasize the importance of a) asking the seller, before buying, to describe flaws if there is no description in the listing, and b) holding the seller to account after the fact; if items are mis-graded, I would really encourage contacting them directly and receiving some kind of compensation for it. You’re paying for a NM item, you should receive one or pay for a lower grade.

otm –– and in my experience it's worth doing. sellers are often happy to knock a few bucks off if something slipped past them or they failed to mention it in their listing. i know i am!

to be clear the last few opinions i've expressed are me-as-buyer. i've just found that it helps to be flexible / understanding about certain things and ultimately it makes my already-expensive and -exhausting compulsion to collect records a little more enjoyable if i can see certain "flaws" as adding a unique history / provenance to my specific copy. as a buyer i essentially flip 180 and pretend to be simultaneously the most anal and the most clueless person ever. i know some ppl who get caught up in the drama about "correct" grading which imo is just shooting yourself in the foot. the important thing is to be as clear as possible; doesn't matter if your "right" if the buyer doesn't fully understanding your criteria etc.

i once had a seller tell me that while packing the record for shipping he realized that he had substantially overgraded it as VG+ when it was actually a beat-to-hell G, so he proactively gave me a full refund, which i thought was a pleasant surprise, but later he got mad at me and left me negative feedback when i gave the transaction a 'neutral' review. in my view it seemed like pretty much the exact situation that option was made for? the guy sent me a worthless record for free, like thanks i guess but idk i wouldnt say it was a flawless transaction

heehee. I dunno i would've just left that alone

yeah neutral seems harsh in that case

it is a funny situation. He still shipped the thing.

Negative: expects me to do his recycling

does it affect their seller rating negatively? i think that was the only time i used it, i assumed it was for transactions that were a wash in some way, like a nonbinding vote of 'present'

yeah if you don't have a certain % of positives, some folks won't sell to you

yeah that's pretty harsh giving that a neutral. I had a similar thing where someone bought an Atari Teenage Riot CD single off me, but it'd been on discogs for like 5 years, and in between me listing it and getting it to post out, the CD had got really bad brown disc rot on it. So I refunded the buyer, explained why, but I didn't send it anyway, I just chucked it in the bin. I would've been pretty annoyed if I'd got neutral feedback for that tbh.

Maybe think of feedback ratings like record grading. Neutral is like Good - i.e. it's actually bad.

you can get retaliatory feedback removed, I’d ask Discogs about it, there’s a form somewhere. It’s worked for me.

huh it hadnt ever occurred to me like that. maybe i'll go back and take it down, in the spirit of the new year and new beginnings

the rating system should have a feature matrix that the seller applies to items and then buyers could define their own rating system based on the features and sort by it. like how linguists describe a sound with a list of +/- features:

[+writing on sleeve]
[-crushed top left corner]
[+crushed bottom left corner]
[-crushed top right corner]
[-crushed bottom right corner]
[-ring wear]
[+barcode cancelled]
[-promotional use only stamp]

of course the sellers would object strongly to this because it would take a lot of time to list 3,000 items this way. but it would avoid the inherent ambiguity of a term like "very good"

xp Yeah! it is just weird though and he can't expect you have that awareness if you're not selling. If that was me selling/refunding I would've just come out and said, hey would you mind just not doing feedback on this transaction.

I don't think neutrals affect a seller's % fwiw. And for buyers they count positively.

I left a buyer a rare neutral for something that was 100% their mistake, didn't even mention that it had left me out a few £ and they got indignant about the feedback until I talked them down.

I don't know if that's harsh - it seems like uncompleted orders are the sort of thing neutral feedback is for. And I really couldn't say that was positive. The system tells you how many orders haven't had feedback left and it bugs me if I don't 0 it periodically.

whenever i sold records online in the past, i always gave "visual grades" and then made special mention of ANY writing that was ANYWHERE on the record. the reason for this is because i sold a 45 to a guy once and it was obviously an unplayed radio copy, as it had the station's call numbers written on the label above the song information in very small letters and i made no mention of this in the listing. the buyer really threw a fit. the record looked unplayed to me and i still only rated the condition as vg-, but the dude was adamant that i misrepresented the item. it was really annoying.

One time, I bought a Who album cheap on ebay. I was surprised to receive about six who albums, all decent, including a nice Quadrophenia. And I'd only bought a "kids are alright" soundtrack.. So I asked, and he said it was because I was the only interested buyer.

Of course, I gave him a positive rating and review, but didn't go into detail, otherwise other people might expect etc.

I have had situations where the album I was just about to send proved to be a G rather than a VG+, but cancelled the order (and explained), and got a thanks back.

one time, a dude did a similar thing on eBay for me, mark. he offered me the opportunity to outright buy the album at a (much) reduced price. i did it and was pleasantly surprised, as i found his grading metric to be decidedly much stricter than my own.

not discogs related but I am part of a FB record buy/sell group and I misgraded something recently that was like G+ instead of VG+ and just gave a full refund. I'd be really bummed is someone left me "Neutral" feedback for that (but, then again, that's a perfect example of why I no longer sell online outside of private groups where there's some degree of accountability)

*if

Oh, yeah.. One more tale..

This happened twice, difft albums.

I bid for and won a Nick Drake album at a very cheap price. Unfortunately, the seller packed it all up, left it in his car one sunny day, oh no its melted oh no full refund.

(other time, fz/mothers 1st album, single lp UK version, won cheaply, but oh no the dog has attacked it oh no.)

Anyway, I accepted their tale of woe, what else can I do? I did mention what happened in neutral feedback, just in case they get tempted to do it again if they are baddies (and if they really were honest, don't be clumsy). The Nick Drake dude got mildly pouty, but hey.

single lp UK version

wait what

Austin - I have done that as well, for things that were VG rather than NM. Figure vg might be a good placeholder, until a nice one comes along.

Yeah, "Freak Out" was a single lp, first time out. Frank was annoyed.

ppls names and writing creeps me out kinda :-/

I quite like it - I like the sense that albums I bought had a life before they came to me (though I'd rather the vinyl itself didn't reflect that too explicitly). Also if it makes the record cheaper then I'm all for that.

Like I picked up a few Isleys albums from the 70s at a Chicago Salvation Army store a couple of decades agio, for 99c each, and they sound fine, and the previous owner had placed her address stickers on them, locating their old homes to somewhere on the south side, and I like to think of these old albums soundtracking some fun parties back in the day.

yeah I know it’s just a weird thing I have

I quite like it - I like the sense that albums I bought had a life before they came to me (though I'd rather the vinyl itself didn't reflect that too explicitly). Also if it makes the record cheaper then I'm all for that.

I prefer my Sixties records in mono, which means I mostly have original pressings that often have names on them, and I love daydreaming about things like that. Who was the kid who originally owned this psychedelic LP, and what was going on in their life while they were listening to it? Were they nervous about the draft? Fantasizing about running off to California? Turn it off and decide to stick with AM radio?

the ones with bongwater stains are my favorite, fun to get high and feel a connection to someone who had this record 40 years ago

I found an ancient stem in some old disco record that I got last year.

I love some of the 12" dance records I’ve got which have been previously ownned by DJs, some using the time-honoured trick of covering up the names on the label to stop prying eyes, and imagining the happy dancing they may have provided in clubs in the past.

I bought some All Seeing I 12"ers on ebay, the seller told me the labels had some scribble on, I said hey I don't mind..

Turned out to be D.J. Parrot's name and telephone number!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/feb/03/record-by-near-unknown-producer-sells-for-41000-most-expensive-discogs-scaramanga-silk

didnt something like this happen once before, and it turned out to be the artist selling it to himself via a sock account or something?

suggestion: discogs should let you have two wantlists, one for generally available records that you'll eventually snatch at a good price, one for rare & unique stuff that you absolutely want to be notified about every time a new copy goes on sale

Chicken dinner!

yeah it feels dumb putting things in my want list that I’ll probably never be able to afford... but I guess if something is reissued it’ll show up on my dashboard. That’s how I found out about this Brian Dalmini italo reissue

Frogbs I know people with two accounts for exactly this reason.

thats a great idea actually