That Escalated Quickly (aka Common Records Turned Rare)

Not a huge rise in price but was really surprised to see how much Malibu by Anderson Paak sells for now. Didn’t realize he got sued for an uncleared sample and the album is officially OOP and won’t be repressed. It was $15 or so everywhere for awhile and now up to around $80 for the regular black vinyl. Way more for the color variants.

UGK - Underground Kingz is another I’m surprised about. It skyrocketed in value. There was only one copy up for $350 so I put mine up for $170 on discogs and it sold within 2 days of posting.
 
I'm seeing this A LOT on Cogs now. Inexplicable high priced sales on a regular basis.
Yep the Buyer’s Clubs have started seeing how much money there is in vinyl after moving on from stuff like comics and sports cards. And no offense to anybody but lots of older people don’t really understand how to use eBay or discogs and when you mix that with a lot of disposable income, they become easy targets for scams like this.
 
So it’s not money laundering but there are things called Buyer’s Clubs which are used to artificially inflate the prices of collectibles. It has trickled into vinyl now. The basic idea is say you want to inflate the price of Stepping Into Tomorrow. And I want to inflate the price of Joey Dosik. You sell me your copy of Stepping Into Tomorrow for $300. I sell you my copy of Joey Dosik for $300. That raises the median value of both albums and buyers see the recent sales price and sellers all see the crazy price it sold for and raise the price of their copies.

The other option I’ve seen is that sometimes you’ll see a brand new buyer with no feedback bidding really high on stuff like eBay. It’s often a plant/someone in a buyer’s club. They bid the price up a lot. If they win the auction, popsike and eBay still register the sale. Person with the new account doesn’t pay, perceived value of the item has gone up and when that item goes up again, whoever else bid on that auction says “well that Joey Dosik sold for $300 last time...if I buy it for $200 it’s a steal!”

this has happened with the Music Matters BN and some people in the MM Facebook group got suckered into it. One guy paid $450 for Speak No Evil but was bidding against someone with zero feedback on a throwaway account. They thought they got a deal because another copy had just sold for $550 a week before.
That is not at all what Dallas Buyers Club would have led me to believe that's what that meant. Those fuckers.
 
I've never sold anything on Discogs because I'm scared a super-particular buyer will find something to complain about and I don't know how shipping really works, but it would be worth it to try for this one. I've only spun it a few times and it's definitely not a pillar of my collection.

If you find yourself with a picky customer or having made a grading mistake, keep your head, stay cool, and kindly help your customer with a return and refund. Eat the cost of shipping back. Correct whatever the mistake you made or tighten up your description/grading to avoid a future confusion by buyers and re-list it. It's very very rare that you'll get a picky buyer who's main goal in life is to make yours miserable and who'll sabotage a return/refund that helps themselves. If your bank account is so tight that temporarily giving back $20-100 from that refunded sale will damage your finances, then I might agree that you should be cautious about selling and using the money right away.
 
If you find yourself with a picky customer or having made a grading mistake, keep your head, stay cool, and kindly help your customer with a return and refund. Eat the cost of shipping back. Correct whatever the mistake you made or tighten up your description/grading to avoid a future confusion by buyers and re-list it. It's very very rare that you'll get a picky buyer who's main goal in life is to make yours miserable and who'll sabotage a return/refund that helps themselves. If your bank account is so tight that temporarily giving back $20-100 from that refunded sale will damage your finances, then I might agree that you should be cautious about selling and using the money right away.
I have heard a few horror stories. I’m not sure I would sell something extremely expensive on discogs but I haven’t had any issues between selling on discogs/eBay/reddit. Worst thing that has happened was I sold a very expensive album on reddit and the guy didn’t put the right address on his paypal invoice and it ended up getting shipped to his old address which was pretty tricky for him to get to. I tried to get it reroutes with no luck but luckily he was able to grab it. It was a little touch and go there for a bit though hah. I now double check a buyers address every sale I make.
 
I have heard a few horror stories. I’m not sure I would sell something extremely expensive on discogs but I haven’t had any issues between selling on discogs/eBay/reddit. Worst thing that has happened was I sold a very expensive album on reddit and the guy didn’t put the right address on his paypal invoice and it ended up getting shipped to his old address which was pretty tricky for him to get to. I tried to get it reroutes with no luck but luckily he was able to grab it. It was a little touch and go there for a bit though hah. I now double check a buyers address every sale I make.
I sold a very limited box set about 2 years ago for a pretty penny and it definitely was a different type of process than selling a 20 buck record. Lots of communication and follow up. It worked out, and the guy left a nice review. I think he was as nervous as I was.
 
If I had a dollar for every record that I got rid of too quickly.
Here is one I let go of way too quickly.

My buddy thought it was a good idea to sell Captain Murphy - Duality for $100 a few years back since he only paid $40 or so for it...

 
Slightly off topic - but as I'm putting up records to sell. The album i'm putting up - i noticed that the picture on discogs is the copy i'm trying to sell. Due to some distinct markings. I'm not even sure how that happened. I forgot how i got this album.
 
I've never sold on Discogs either...I doubt I ever will.

I used to sell the occasional out of print DVD on Ebay a long time ago and never had issues with that, but selling vinyl these days is a different animal entirely.
 
Slightly off topic - but as I'm putting up records to sell. The album i'm putting up - i noticed that the picture on discogs is the copy i'm trying to sell. Due to some distinct markings. I'm not even sure how that happened. I forgot how i got this album.

This has happened to me a couple times...not selling a record, but acquiring it and then adding it to my collection.

The first was a 801 - 801 Live US promo - the green dot on the side 1 label is exactly the same on mine....a bit odd. I think I got mine in the bins in Portland.

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The second was X ‎– The Masterpiece Collection - I googled Porterhouse X Masterpiece and got what was suppose to be a dead link for a very OOP box set. The owner of Porterhouse was in the works to get a set back from a store that was going out of business. The owner of the store just happened to be the guy that uploaded the photos - as now I have box # 5 / 1500
 
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Also someone explain what’s going on with the blue variant of the “Call Me By Your Name” OST. I guess technically it was limited, but it wasn’t hard to find and there was a black run plus a second color run (peach). It’s parked in the high hundred range with very few for sale at $200+ and I routinely get blind messages asking me to sell.
 
UGK - Underground Kingz
I sold my copy back in October 2019 (weirdly it isnt showing in the 'last sold' history even though there is one from 2018) for £80 plus postage which was at the higher end of sold at the time. I was glad for the shelf space as well, that thing was chunky!
 
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