I’d have been on top of the world! I’ll get my coat.
An interesting charity shop find!
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
I’d have been on top of the world! I’ll get my coat.
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And then they took money from her for the record! You’d think they’d have given it to her for free after her honesty.
Also: THREE POUND FIFTY for a Carpenters record, which charity shops are swimming in.
Gosh , there’d have been such a feeling coming over her.
Still, if she kept the record then there’s always something there to remind her….
…..and it will be yesterday once more…..
When did this happen? Was it only yesterday?
Well, if it happens again tomorrow, it’ll be yesterday once more.
If you think these are bad, we’ve only just begun.
Yes, Slug, and it’s going to take some time…
Sorry, has to be said again …
£3.50 for a record by the f***** Carpenters!!!!
Wtf (a) buys a Carpenters record and (b) pays £3.50 for it?
Probably passed up a mint mono Safe as Milk for 25p to get to it.
These dodgers haven’t got a Scooby.
I sometimes buy things I don’t need from a charity shop just to make a donation and keep the stock turning over. It’s all for a good cause.
Whats wrong with the Carpenters? £3.50 is steep, I’ll give you that, but this is Stockton Heath, once you cross the swing bridge it’s like another country.
Yes. Residents of Stockton Heath can easily afford to pay twice that.
There is The Beatles Red album on CD for 4.99. Bargain
I’m not a great chazza shop crate digger, they are often down on the floor and my knees won’t take it, but when I do have a flip through I often think it is like looking through a cross section of civilian record collections of my parent’s generation – always loads of easy listening, stereo demonstration discs, James Last etc….and then you get the usual 80s stuff when records were selling by the shedload. Presumably the 60s and 70s nuggets are creamed off to sell via other outlets..? I’m sure @minibreakfast will have a take on this! Prices do seem to vary wildly – Oxfam seem to really try it on with anything deemed collectable, whereas your local charities usually don’t have a clue…?
A mate’s son recently did work experience at the local Oxfam book/music shop. He was left to price up stock with a catalogue and a web site to consult. His dad did give him a requests list to be stickered up at 99p and hidden under the counter but sadly there was no treasure during the lad’s stint.
I really don’t know, to be honest. Obviously Oxfam have their website, plus their in-store “experts” (i.e. those who deem the Jehosophat & Jones LP worth £10), but it varies. Mostly the bigger charities will put particularly valuable nuggets on ebay, but generally seem to keep other things in-store for a bit and then rotate unsold stock between branches.
But policies also vary between different branches of the same charity. One of my favourites sells all LPs for £2, and another has been experimenting with different pricing strategies over the last couple of years, and seems to have now settled back to selling albums for £1 or £2. I guess the manager has free rein in this respect.
The smaller charities are your best bet for a bargain, since they tend to sell all LPs, whatever they are, at a the same price. Unless of course they employ a volunteer “music guy” (always a guy), who got the gig by being able to tell the difference between a record and a kitten.
Anyway, the ratio of James Last to Fairport Convention I’m sure has more to do with the quality of donations than to store policy. People tend to donate the stuff they can’t sell themselves, treating charity shops more like a convenient rubbish disposal service.
Second hand record: has scratches all over it
Kitten: the scratches are all on your arms.
Do I get the job?
99.5% of the LPs in charity shops will never sell to anybody, ever, ever, ever – even the ones that mini goes to, which seem to be branches of Rounder Records with added cardigans.
The volunteer “music guy” is clearly in many cases somebody who is thought of as an expert, but isn’t – and merely comes along and says “Uh yeah, vinly music discs are like really collectable these days, people pay fortunes for them”…. but has failed to notice that that only applies to some records, not all of them.
So, my local Oxy has STF Val Doonican albums selling for two quid. Who in the woild…..
Yeah, that Julie Covington album was a bit of a steal at a pound.
If it was her 1978 eponymous, produced and musically directed by old Mr Balmoral himself, RT, indeed. And discos tells me her debut, ahead of a slew of Playaway recordings with Brian Cant, was with Clive James and Pete Atkin. But less so if it was Rock Follies or DCFMA.
Better than that, it was The Beautiful Changes, from 1971 (apparently a good year for albums, I’ve heard). https://www.discogs.com/Julie-Covington-The-Beautiful-Changes/release/2306646
A friend of mine used to do volunteer work for the local hospice charity. They are well organised and have several shops in Exeter and East Devon, and he used to pick stuff out to go on eBay and Amazon. I visited the warehouse once and saw how they dealt with donations, and my eyes lit up at the number of records they had in the place. I was tempted to be ‘that music guy’, mainly because it would be great to turn up a real nugget, but I looked at the scale of the stash and just thought about the amount of research involved because you really only know about a vanishingly small amount of recordings, let alone variations between pressing and so on. Not to mention imagining the look on Mrs. T’s face at the number I would have bought!
I remember Mojoworking explaining the differences between different pressings of Help! Mono/stereo, colour of print and Parlophone logo on the centre label. I forget the details but there were multiple variations. Most worth a few pounds but one worth a few hundred.
I bought a neighbour’s vinyl collection a year or so back. She had her dad’s early pressing of Revolver and was convinced it was worth hundreds. I had to spend about an hour on Discogs to convince her it was third pressing and worth a tenner, tops. The copy in my In Mono box sounds better.
Did she have No Parlez?
Of course! And four – count ’em – Kenny G albums.
I couldn’t name one Kenny G album, let alone four.
There’s really no such thing as a ‘third pressing’ – it’s just Record Collector’s price guide using some means to differentiate between variations of the record label design and/or text. Albums like this would have been pressed continually over several years.
It has the Dr. Robert typos on the sleeve and labels corrected, and the matrix cut into the dead wax ties it down to late ’66.
There would have been multiple pressings during ’66 as the stampers only last a 10-20,000 presses before they wear out and have to make new stampers from the mother plates. First vinyl off a new stamper sounds best because the grooves are sharper, last vinyl off an old stamper sounds worse.
EMI’s Hayes plant had well over a hundred record presses at that time, some automatic for handling big pressing runs, others manual for handling smaller jobs. Beatles albums, at least at the time of their initial release, would have been run off more than one presses simultaneously.
The early Parlophone label was white, later yellow. Aged five, I owned a copy of With The Beatles. I coloured in the white label yellow with a felt tip pen eradicating its value. I could still play it, mind.
The early albums, including Help!, had fewer Stereo copies than Mono.
IIRC, my mono copy of Help! in average condition with a gold/yellow label was worth about £30 max. I really must dig it out.
Four Kenny G albums.
Your neighbour was presumably Glenn Hoddle.
Or Kanye West.
The spines look nice, two either side of the Milli Vanilli LP.
But, but… why?
Are your records… NOT ALPHABETICAL?! 😱
Gotcha!
I followed a Section 25* twelve inch single on Factory Records, priced at a tenner, around the Oxfam branches of Cambridgeshire market towns for a year.
It’s a great single, but what is the likelihood of finding a collector of such an obscurity, priced at top-dollar, in Ely or St. Ives?
(*) Who? Exactly.
I just checked whether you can still exchange old bank notes (and you can), but came across a headline that there are still 222 million £5 and £10 notes out there somewhere! Presumably, mostly in record sleeves…
Presumably that’s known serial numbers unaccounted-for.
Some of them will be ones that disintegrated in the washing machine, ended up in landfill after being chucked in the bin, got burnt on bonfire night in an old piece of furniture, were used to light the cigars of ’80s city traders or were burnt by the KLF on Jura.
The Oxfam in Manchester has a bizarrely high level of semi-forgotten Lionel Richie singles in stock. Hey, for every Hello there’s a Do it to Me, as the actor said to the bishop, nudge nudge, etc., etc.
Hello, is it No Parlez you’re looking for?
Car boots remain far more interesting (and cheaper) than charity shops for music. Right now I’m listening to David Munrow demonstrate his crumhorn.
He’ll be playing it next. Oho!
Aren’t we due another podcast Mini?
I don’t do those anymore.
That is a shame. Monday morning database mangling hasn’t been the same since.
“Sad parp”
*opens window*
For all those desperate charity shop customers – the wait is over. You can finally buy the holy grail of record collecting.
Paul Young’s “No Parlez is due for a vinyl reissue – on colored wax! Limited edition!
If you weren’t already convinced that the vinyl revival has peaked, this is the clincher. Absolutely hilarious. And even more hilariously, limited to only “one copy per customer”, presumably to fox those flippers!
Anyone want my copy? No reasonable offer refused.
Swap it for 2 copies of mine?
The 20th Anniversary release of Manic Street Preachers’ “Tell Me My Truth something something something” drives it close.
I have seen hundreds and hundreds of those over the last decade.
Saw another this morning.
Wasn’t exactly a “keeper” was it.
Pop has Eaten Itself.
Luckily for me it isn’t half-speed mastered, or I’d have been tempted.