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

also re: VNYL, i'll never forget chaki's invaluable investigative reporter visit to the store. god, what a dire company. i'm surprised there's anyone active at that company to block Jason Gore on twitter, their instagram and Facebook have been dormant for a long, long time.

Dank Deals and other super bodacious offers to take advantage of before time runs out

haha yes the whole discovery of the VYNL model was a great ILM moment and Chaki's video the cherry on top

"Vibe system?!!"

I actually like the sound of this, if not the name...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/18/uk-vinyl-hotel-vinyl-pimp-hackney-london

God, awful name.

Depending on his pricing and overall temperament might be accurate

He is described as a "serial entrepreneur"

the idea sounds fun. honestly hard to get past the name.

foul name

I'd be nervous about finding enough vinyl to meet the quota that I'd actually want but I guess it must really be a treasure trove...?

nope, nothin but lawrence welk and feels so good, far as the eye can see

Bed N' Buyer's remorse

they're a long established discogs seller with about 10k records listed. prices are not bad for london:

https://www.discogs.com/seller/Vinyl.Pimp.London/profile

i first encountered them through the record sweep series on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS53xtCgzRE

most expensive thing they have from my wantlist is an original white label of this for £85 (which is way more than i'd want to spend on it, but call that one the cost of the hotel for the night i guess):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv8fS3Nt1S8

only 2 from my wantlist. guess I'm not staying there

tbf that's hardly the point of digging

it is indicative of whether or not they cater for your tastes though. they are dance music specialists really, they mostly get stock through buying dj collections iirc

skot was saying on the record store thread that his brother used to do overnight lock-ins at his store, so it's not a new idea, apart from the bit about giving people a bed

a few years ago some guy bought like 500 LPs and 12s off me cos he was stocking up his vinyl guest house. hope he wasn't planning on selling them for money though, cos they really were complete dogshit

Don't worry he abandoned the guesthouse idea and shifted his energies to a more breakthrough concept called "vnyl.org"

a lot of my best scores had been because the owner "specialized" in something that wasn't of much interest to me, and therefore neglected what i found interesting

the whole point of digging is that it's fun because of the uncertainty of what you might encounter

and if their entire collection is already listed on discogs then it doesn't seem very fun to me

a lot of my best scores had been because the owner "specialized" in something that wasn't of much interest to me, and therefore neglected what i found interesting

Ha yes, that is very true! But you can't always count on finding good things in those stores, and if there's a £250 minimum spend at stake, you do need some sort of guarantee that you'll find a fairly substantial chunk of things you're into

i've known a couple folks who have done overnight lock-in/sleepover digs and must confess i've never really understood the point, aside from the fact that they were DJs who kept overnight vampire hours anyway. if it was done up like a really cool space where you could hang with your friends and listen to records all night i can see it being fun, but this "hotel room" just looks like a mattress on some lofted plywood and a couple cheap chairs in a corner, plus you can't play music after midnight? no thanks.

if i wasn't completely broke i'd definitely be into it. rummaging through 10,000 records that you've mostly never heard before, no real time pressure and you can bring your own beer? i'd be like a pig in shit tbh

it sounds really fun in a dorm sleepover kind of way, i’d definitely enjoy taking drugs and doing this if I could also listen to the records

My 17 year old coworker told me yesterday she spent $100 at Goodwill and I was like right on, hope you got a nice coat or boots or something. Then she told me she bought a “Grease vinyl” for $30.
Goodwill in on the grift!

$30!

Thrift stores are vinyl grift stores now. My local has all their LPs at $4.99 -- it's the cheapest in the area. But it's all dollar bin fodder.

$30!!! I had to zip my lip

That's an actual crime being committed

onfg

sorry OMFG

Sealed early pressing, I hope.

you guys haven't heard Grease? proto-punk band from Milwaukee, only released one record privately in '76, $30 is a steal!

For $30 I'd want a hot stamper so hot the vinyl's melting on my turntable and running into the mechanism.

It's electrifyin'

i'm in a 'thrift scored records' group on FB where the rule is you can only post reccords you found in a thrift store and so many people complain their goodwills and thrifts have started jacking prices on albums to insane prices. Lots of $80 beatles records in terrible condition in locked up cases.

have often found stuff on my wantlist on Vinyl Pimp's discogs account but the whole thing of "spend £300 and stay in my hotel for free" they blurb under every entry squicked me out.

good setting for a murder mystery imo

like Clue but all the murder weapons are things like "unstable Ikea Kallax"

Speaking of Goodwill getting in on the grift, have you ever checked out shopgoodwill.com? Some Goodwill stores sell stuff that never even makes it to the record bins if they think it will command a higher price on the internet. Nothing is graded, so it's a bit of a gamble.

I've tried it a couple of times with mixed results. One time I bought a lot of funk/r&b records that included a decent copy of Innervisions, but a Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits that had huge skips all over side B. Another time though, I found a sealed copy of the first Warpaint EP that turned out to be a rare, colored pressing.

https://shopgoodwill.com/categories/records-8-track?p=1

dang i had no idea -- this is kind of blowing my mind!

they do it with books as well

A 2013 article on Watchdog.org reported that Goodwill's tax returns showed that more than 100 Goodwills pay less than minimum wage while simultaneously paying more than $53.7 million in total compensation to top executives.[41]

yah they suck

i figure everybody knows, but yeah. still better than Savers!

what's worse -- Salvation Army or Goodwill?

i think SA bc iirc they are openly homophobic as well as being stingy w workers
Goodwill sounds simply stingy?