Needles & Grooves

Also, comc’s model would be very interesting for vinyl. That’s my “shark tank”idea. Imagine if all the albums on discogs were sent into one warehouse where they were expertly scanned and visually graded and for an additional charge you could have them play tested. Customers could rely on consistent grading and expert shipping. $1 per album for the company to post plus 15% of sale price if you decide to cash out

@Crabbers Jordan is the exception, you got some Jordan inserts from the 90s and you’re probably in good shape.

These cards here are consistently selling above $200 and I had purchased maybe 15-20 of them late last year for between $1-$3.... who would have thought that my best investment of the year would have been some silly cards, not me. 2012-13 Panini Prizm - [Base] #1 - Lebron James

@MikeH Those pricing guides were called Beckett. And we lived by those! Haha

I had Tuff Stuff cuz it included prices of starting lineups

The Beckett forum boards were very cool back in the day too. Back when it was a hobby for collectors more than investors. People looking out for one another and helping each other get their whales... then the investors came in and ruined everything. I fear this is starting to happen with the vinyl world now.

Oh man...starting lineups...I still have a box of those in boxes at my parents somewhere

On the Discogs tip, they’ve also been talking about the huge volume of collections that have been added in the last few months so the inflation may just be riding along with all the new content. Also I’d wager stores adding their stock probably has some impact too, since most run pretty fixed margins.

Some video games, too. GameCube, PS1, N64

@Corycm that's another thing I didn't think about...all the stores joining discogs for the first time as well as people finally having time to enter their collections. But there have just been a number of albums I have randomly checked and was shocked to see what the going prices are now. UGK Underground Kingz is listed at $195 cheapest now and has sold recently for $150+.

Feel free to ignore my rants, another thing that sprung up in sports cards is referred to as the buyers club. It can be one or many people that artificially increase the value of a card they have stock in. They bid against themselves and purposefully win auctions they never intend to pay for at much higher than normal prices, giving a false sense of increased value.

^^^ I think this exact thing has been happening with the Frank Ocean stuff.

If you tell hoarders and/or people with emotional and/or mental impairments that prohibit impulse control "here's an extra $1200 check, plus an extra $600/week for unemployment, and by decree you don't have to pay your rent right now"... people will spend.

@Tys1 but isn't it difficult to do this on discogs? I suppose you could make a 2nd fake account and buy it at a high price...But I've seen Frank sell for $450+ on reddit as well. Somebody sold Endless + Blonde bundled for like $750 the other week or somethin crazy hah.

@High Rant District --I have definitely bought more records in quarantine...a mix of more free time to look for stuff, some money saved from going out, and being in front of my turntable all day. I also noticed recently that the delays in media mail shipping have also made me buy more...I have like 15 packages waiting to be delivered and it snuck up on me hah.

I've been pretty good this year with impulse control on the collection. This last month was the only month that I bought more than 6 albums (and that's only because I bought 6 at the beginning and then VMP dropped the Fiona release. What was I gonna do, not buy Fiona? Pshh.)

@MikeH the thing is. All the buyers club has to do is CREATE the value. After that the value is there, something is worth whatever somebody will pay for it and so long as the buyers club doesn’t t mess up and flood the market with their own excess supply then the monster is loose and it no longer has anything to do with the buyers club, they just created value... artificially

^^^ creating the value can be done on cogs rather easily, but also via eBay, reddit, etc. anywhere people see that something “sold” for a high price really... in their mind it’s “well this guy on reddit just bought one for $300 last week, $250 must be a deal!” Well, the $300 one was fake as shit... but the bar has still been raised, the value of that item is now $250.

“Somebody sold Endless + Blonde bundled for like $750 the other week or somethin crazy hah.”

Did they though? Or did they “do that” so that you would think you were getting a great deal when the same person list it on a eBay buy it now for $650. The stock market is somewhat regulated against this level of manipulation but collectibles are not! Gary Vaynerchuk is known to exploit this buyers club idea.

@Tys1 True. I guess we will never know. I thought discogs only listed actual sold prices after people received the items. I guess it works out in my favor though because I don’t buy really expensive stuff, I only sell sometimes. Just kinda crazy!