Harry’s Place Arts

The Polish hip Hop wins hands down. And it frikken rymes, too! I don’t know Polish but if it’s anything like Spanish, that shit ain’t easy.

Amazon’s a terrible guide to the rarity value of a CD. Whilst there are occasional bargains to be had in the Record & Tape Exchange, my guess is that if you got it for a quid, then that’s probably what it’s worth.

“Amazon’s a terrible guide to the rarity value of a CD. “

Why do you say that?

A while back I decided to get rid of my CD collection, in its entirety. With around 4,000 CDs it wasn’t going to be practical to put them all on eBay, so I wanted to know which ones were likely to go for higher prices.

You can’t find out the going value of an item on eBay until the auction’s over, so it was easier for me to search Amazon, which has a wider selection at any one time.

I found myself constantly surprised at how many items which I had considered bog-standard, were available for tens - and sometimes hundreds - of pounds. After a while it became clear that people just put stuff up there at silly prices. This was generally confirmed by my results on eBay.

It seems to me to be the case that there are a few sellers who just chance it, by putting up thousands of items on Amazon in the hope that, where one of them becomes unavailable from any other seller at a lower price, some unsuspecting punter will take the bait believing that this is the going rate. If I’m right, they would only need the odd sale to make it worth their while, and it would be far less hassle than selling hundreds of items at market value.

“After a while it became clear that people just put stuff up there at silly prices.”

Oh, I’m sure that’s true, but one can generally get a better picture the more listings for the item there are, and by checking the US of European versions of the site as well. In this case, the same product on the US site was from $48, which was in the same ball park. It is less likely that chancers all around the world have settled on this price range. There are two other sites worth checking to get a more accurate idea of what you can expect to pay for (or get for) an item - EIL and Musicstack.

eBay is the least reliable because a lot depends on chance, time of closing, and things like that. And it has its fair share of “buy it now” chancers too. But it’s still the place you’re most likely to get a bargain.

Of course, unless you’re selling, it’s all academic. I have quite a few collectable records with relatively high ‘book values’, but I don’t ever plan to sell them (unless they become the currency in a post apocolyptic world where the gramphone again rules), so most likely, some ungrateful nephew will offload them on Oxfam ofter I’ve kicked it, becuause, ultimately, the ‘real’ value is only to me.

I’m only going on my own experience, which has shown me that Amazon is generally way off the mark. eBay fluctuates wildly, and Amazon is consistently over-priced. If it’s under-priced on Amazon, it won’t be there long.

‘Soda Shop Pop’ has been listed on eBay for $5.76, as a ‘Buy It Now’ item, and as such was not subject to the vagaries of auction. It is currently available on Amazon for $14.49.

Of course, you’re right that its real value is whatever you get out of it (notwithstanding whether you can find it cheaper elsewhere), and if CDs are your thing, £1 is a steal. I was only responding to your invoking of Amazon prices, which experience has shown me, are consistently unrealistic, and your inference that you’d found a collectible.

I own the Black Sand album and really like it. Reminds me a little of No Pussyfooting by Fripp and Eno. One of Black Sand is the bloke out of Lemon Jely but perhaps you knew that already. For 99p, a great bargain. I paid full price when it came out in the Spring….

Yes, sorry, back to the songs! Unfortunately I lost my hearing two days ago on a flight to Tel Aviv. I’m miserable.

“and your inference that you’d found a collectible.”

Um no, my inference was that I’d found a *bargain*. That is to say, something for much cheaper than I could expect to get it elsewhere.

Brett, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you somehow.

I would have classified a CD that goes for up to £50 as a collectible. As you expressed “shock and horror” that such a price could be realised for your find, I inferred that you had inferred that it was a collectible. I was wrong to infer that inference, when no such inference was implied. In fact, what you did was to express shock that this CD apparently went for very high prices on the second-hand market, which, of course, could in no way be understood to imply that it was a collectible.

Thanks for the clarification.

“I would have classified a CD that goes for up to £50 as a collectible. “

Well, perhaps it’s considered “collectable” in teh UK - who knows? A book on vinyl collecting I got from Fopp a few weeks ago made the point that some records considered common in the US fetch huge prices in the UK - and visa versa. I found this an odd point, especially if true, since one would have thought the Internet smoothed that particular anomaly out.

Anyhow, we’re straying very much off topic here…

I like the polish hip hip.

There’s apparently quite a big polish hip hop scene.

I like the Polish rap song too. It is a pearl in a 120,000 square mile pile of shit.