I live 10 miles from Devizes. Is the place you are talking about called Collectables Corner? They also sell books, comics, toys etc. All second hand. The chap that runs it is a top fella. Maybe he is Australian...I wasn't sure. He had worked a long time behind the iron curtain.
Well, here's a bit of a tip, check the vintage children's records that have picture sleeves of any kind. If the vinyl looks decent it might be an overlooked bit of treasure. People want their old Sooty and Gerry Anderson records they wore out and lost, but they want nice copies. They aren't usually listed in record price guides and a lot of vinyl enthusiasts will pass them by or assume they have old ice lolly fingerprints inside. Same for the U.S., those Hanna-Barbera ones can go for three figures if they are in particularly nice condition.
In Canadian Value Village you can get decent CDs for 99 cents, LPs are twice as much and most are worth a dime or a quarter at best. You can also find amazing bargains in Electronics sometimes, I got a Somy Blu-ray player, networked and can play SACDs for $10 last week!
You never know, have to calculate how old someone who had that when it was new would be now. If you hang on awhile longer... There are too many Around The World With Sooty LPs about though, wouldn't want to steer anyone into buying that one.
I'm not sure - I think the original shop closed, but I haven't been back for several years so I don't know if it re-opened, he mainly sold Records and CDs.
Most of my CD buying comes from Charity Shops these days Today I picked up The Godfathers - More Songs About Love & Hate The Lemonheads - Lovey Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels / Sunburst And Snowblind (no barcode) Stravinsky - Song of three Nightingales - SACD All for 50p each and all near mint I tend to find that more upmarket places have the worst selection and charge the most; often the scummier the town the better the selection. Sadly I waste a fair bit of time going to scummy towns. My biggest gripe are charity shops that place CDs next to DVDs as I frequently get stuck waiting for what I call 'DVD Man' to finish browsing. A tedious and obnoxious individual who picks out every single DVD - reads the synoposis for a few minutes before moving on to the next one. I seem to encounter these DVD Men on most shopping trips. I often leave the store, return 20 minutes later only to still find him a quarter of the way through. Luckily most CD buyers can find what they want quite quickly and move on. Rant Over
I think there are multiple individuals (of both genders) who do this. Sadly I don't have the patience to wait: I edge into their space and venture an unwanted opinion about whatever they are perusing; and they move off rapidly!
When we were in Liverpool, I picked up a very nice copy of Nick Lowe's 'I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass' on Radar Records. I think it was the very first single on Radar...
The Oxfam shops around Manchester tend to have organised LP sections, though there's rarely anything of interest there. Also, they usually have a few rare LPs in the window, in poor condition, baking in the sunshine, with price tags sometimes in the hundreds of pounds placed there by someone who has looked up the mint condition value in a rare record guide.
No 1 in the charity shop hit parade has got to be Paul Youngs "No Parlez" the amount of times I've seen this this, it's a guarantee in each shop. No 2 has got to be anything by Gary Glitter, future collectibles I think not. 3rd falls to Harry Secombe. 4th Holst The planets!! The list goes on and on. I used to make a Saturday early morning habit of trawling the some 12 or more charity shops in my town not any more. What's the betting I miss out a highly collectible!!!!
Sorry about making you wait but I am retired and have nothing else to do but piss you young hipsters off!
So good to read a mirror experience from the Poms that we have here in Oz. "Nothing to see here". No point even looking. No decent records and no electronics. Reading about all the 'Goodwill Scores' of obscure and valuable gear posted from the US gets sooo tedious.
Same in Ireland when back in the nineties my mates used to trawl the charity shops for vinyl and were buying good records of 50p each etc. These days vinyl is cool and there are not many records in charity shops but there are cds to be found. Last week I got the Best of the Divine Comedy and Nick Drake Bryter Layter for 1Euro.
'No Parlez' is unbelievably common. A lot of the charity shops I've been a regular customer of have thrown Gary Glitter's records straight in the bin. They don't want to be seen with them in stock.
In the bargain basement of Notting Hill Record Exchange they had multiple copies of No Parlez on display with a sign up saying "Please Buy Paul Young's No Parlez!" They'd have trouble giving them away. I never see Gary Glitter records in charity shops, they probably do throw them in the bin, nobody wants to be seen buying them either.
What is it about charity shops that causes 1,000s of people to surrender their Andy Williams LPs en masse ?
Found first pressing LPs of "Rubber Soul" (mono) and Fleetwood Mac's "Then Play On" at a charity shop for 50p each. Both in great shape.
I did get a very good turntable and a good amp from different charity shops about 5 years ago but nowhere seems to sell electronics now. Recently, an Australian Youtuber was saying that he could never find any good vinyl in charity shops, yep, same thing here.
Still, I managed to buy 24 LPs last week at 3 for 1€. Among them, I found a Jobim LP and a double of Georges Brassens. I was about to buy a modern double of his on Amazon.fr for 19,99€ plus postage when I chanced upon this for 0,33c with practically the same tracklisting. Not only that but they were all mint.
Yes, there is a lot of rubbish in op shop record and CD bins. I get tired of flicking past the same Readers Digest, Richard Tauber, Bagpipes, etc. But there is a reason for that. Simply, they are the records that nobody wants to buy, so they remain in the bin. So much so that I've been able to memorise much of the stock in my local, which means I can flick through the records without needing to look too closely at the records, I just look for ones that don't look familiar. The records people want to buy sell very quickly. Many a time have I gone into my local op shop (which I visit at least once a week), and found the person before me pulling out Beatles and other albums that I would have snapped up quickly. Many times I've found something of interest, and have been casually informed at the checkout "that has only just come in". Many times I've seen good quality records of interest that I don't want to buy, and when I go into the store they are gone but the same rubbish is in the racks. When I was younger I recall seeing lots of stereo equipment (and other electronics) in op shops, and now there is not as much. Yes, health and safety is to blame. I spoke to one op shop about it a few years ago. They said that anything electrical they sell needs to be tested and tagged, and that cost them $10 per item, resulting in selling many items for a loss or for marginal profit. So they didn't do very much of it. When donating to my local, I offered to get some electrical items tagged via work before donating to save them that money, but they said they had someone in their organisation who had the equipment to do it. Despite this, I don't see many electrical items in their store.
My local Oxfam now use the Record Collector price guide book and price even scratched records at Mint prices. Still, some records and CD's are priced cheaply. I recently bought a George Michael promotional CD for £1 and immediately sold it in Discogs for £35 I also bought 22 early 70's Bollywood soundtrack records in perfect condition for 50p each. I know nothing about this genre but they looked new and the sleeves were nice and colourful. Sold most of them for around £12-£15 each.
