In what ways did ebay change record collecting for you?

Is that the Different Class album with the 12 different sleeves? That looks great and is very hard to find. A lot of copies have torn front covers. It's far less common than a lot of albums from the 60s and 70s that sell for high amounts.

 

PayPal makes international payment so much easier.
All those foreign bank drafts could be a 'booger-bear'.

 

It made some obscure titles more available but it also drove up prices of some items that weren't so obscure.

 

You can now find anything (almost) and its a lot faster than the old days of searching magazines like Goldmine etc. Snail Mail was awfully slow.

 

Made it too easy

 

Well, I currently have 879 "likes" as a buyer on ebay, so I'm pretty pumped up.

 

Your's is an interesting twist on the instant gratification concept. I always thought of instant gratification as having the item in hand. But then again, if it ain't there (at the store) you ain't gonna have it in hand and Ebay has solved that problem beautifully - even if we do have to wait for the delivery. And yes, your son is gonna like them Kinks CD's!

 

I got onto ebay end of 03 beginning of 04, and at that point, I had pretty much given up on getting a lot of the Bowie singles that I had missed from the late 80s onwards. I figured, I never would be able to fill the holes, and would satisfy myself with just the albums. Even though in the 80s I had been buying all the 7" and 12" singles I could get my hands on. Then I saw what was available on ebay and pretty much filled all the holes in both cd singles and 12" singles in the space of a few years. Loved it. Then ebay became too corporate, with way too many professional sellers instead of people just trying to sell stuff they no longer needed. Prices went up and it lost its interest for me. I probably use Amazon Marketplace more now.

 

When I discovered eBay, I found everything on my then-current "want" list within a year. But after browsing what's out there that I didn't previously know about, I developed a new want list that was ten times bigger.

 

ezBuy

 

Simply put, my collection would be impossible without ebay. I collect Beatles LPs from around the world. I've found the odd pressing from Latin America or Africa that made its way to the US "organically," but most of the time when I buy an LP made in an obscure corner of the world, it is from an ebay seller who lives thousands of miles from me.

Even the US part of my collection would be a small fraction of what it is, and the rarer the item (copies of Songs Pictures & Stories with the concert banner stickers) the less likely I would have found it no matter how many stores or record fairs I tried to visit.

I have been fortunate to establish ongoing relationships with good sellers in a few distant countries, but even then, the original contact often came through an ebay transaction. Where the other guy has a talent for unearthing the stuff I like and we have a compatible idea of what LPs are worth, this has led to literally dozens of transactions with some sellers.

 

I'd have to agree with that on the grading issue. I haven't had but two issue among hundreds of Ebay and online purchases and they were both resolved. One was very funny. I received a very rare Ventures LP for which I paid just over 300 clams. It played well but I found a skip in one track. I examined it to see if it was any of the common issues like a crumb in the track and applied a more forceful setting of the anti-skate and tone arm weight. Nothing worked. I had to contact the seller and ask to return for a refund. Of course the seller resisted with such a large purchase. They told me I must have been playing the record on an inferior system. They offered to send a recording of the disk they'd made previous to the auction to prove it didn't skip when they played it on their system. Of course I figured it was likely their recording came from another source so this wouldn't be any proof at all. I said I didn't need their recording. Still they sent the recording. I gave their recording a listen in the area of the skip and sure enough, their recording had the same skip!! I was able to point that out to them with the exact time of the skip and I was immediately given a return authorization. However, the joke was on me. I actually wish I hadn't returned that record because I later found a couple of other copies and the skip is in the same place on each of those copies - unfortunately my copies are in lesser shape than the returned copy. It is an Armed Forces release and I think they make their copies from a master disk that had the skip. It is not a pirated record because there is very little demand for the record overall - it is not well known and doesn't figure in any collector guides.

 

Ebay is a great way to find stuff, but ain't cheap for the most part.

People trying to get almost full retail for used stereo equipment. I can understand if it's some rare vintage stuff but who is going to buy a used cd-player or amp for retail minus 100-200$ or so? Proper value is 50% off and everyone knows it!

There shouldn't even be a BuyItNow option IMO. It's up to the buyers to decide what stuff is worth anyway, right?

For music however, ebay is a fantastic way to find rare oop items.

 

I went through an e-bay phase, but haven't bought music on there in a long time. I hated the auction thing, getting sniped at the last minute and all that. I much prefer Discogs, though I guess a buy it now is ok for eBay, too. The worst thing is I think a lot of the smaller shops put their good stuff online, which is a shame, as I'll buy a rare album that looks promising even if I know nothing about it. But I'm not going to scan online sales for stuff I don't even know exists!

 

I bought a few CD's on Ebay about 10 years ago (a couple of Saint Etienne CD singles and a Peter Gabriel EP.) The Gabriel CD took forever to arrive and I always suspected it was because I won the auction as the lowest and only bidder. There were some major upheavels in my life after that which made collecting anything a low priority. In the last few years I have started buying vinyl again but so far I'm sticking with thrift stores and bargain bins. I'd consider doing Ebay for a few special items or bargains, but I'm in no rush.

 

Wow, I am 180 from this. For me, finding an undocumented LP is the apogee of why I collect records. Usually, it even beats finding an LP I've been looking for since forever.

 

That's the position I take at the supermarket (and record stores, for that matter), but somehow it never works out that way.

 

The Buy It Now option is a nice way for a seller to set a price that they are willing to accept without going through the auction process and setting reserves, just in case the bidding doesn't meet their minimums. Less fuss overall. Either you accept their price or you move on. Couldn't be easier!

Using sniping software or websites, like eSnipe, is really the best way to go... especially if you know the bidding will get competitive. You just set the price you're willing to pay and the software places your bid in the final seconds of the auction. That way you don't have to babysit the auction and keep checking to see if you've been outbid. Also, by placing your bid at the very end of the auction, nobody else can come along and slowly bid you up to see where your ceiling is. That protects you against dishonest sellers who employ shill bids.

 

Oh, I love it when I find these in a record store, but I'm not going to randomly look at, say, psych lps and see what pulls up.

 

eBay did not change collecting for me the continual loss of local stores changed it by in a sense forcing me to shop eBay due to lack of selection locally.

 

I took 10 trips to Europe or South America by selling off a ton of old punk, and especially noise, vinyl. I got stuff like Whitehouse and Come Organization out of my system pretty quickly and didn't mind getting $500 for something that cost me $10.

 

I have never bought CDs or LPs much from ebay, amazon gets most of my money, but I did buy some reels to reels from ebay for awhile, and still go on the site and look at is what is for sale, and at the 4 tracks as well, which I have seen very few examples of (I had an 8 track player and then a cassette player in my car when I was younger)

 

The early days of ebay were incredible. I was among the first wave of users and got some great bargains back in the day. Now, not so much.

 

EBay helped me locate a number of inexpensive but hard to find CDs (like XTC CD singles with uncollected B-sides) and a few splurge items. Also, by buying from sellers with reputations rather than random characters at record shows, I can be confident that the high-end stuff is legitimate.

 

Understatement of the year. The bidding wars of yesteryear are pretty much long gone on Ebay. If you list your rare cd on Ebay for a dollar that 50-100 dollar item might very well sell for a dollar, hopefully to me! Seller beware. A seller I know told me he bought a house and supports his family solely buying on Ebay and selling back onto Ebay and Amazon. We spent months battling each other over a 10K cd collection - all brand new and all starting at 99 cents with cheap shipping. I still check his sold auctions every couple weeks and laugh. He does very well with the "Very high price reduced by 50% is still a very high price" scam - it works.