Discogs While Shopping...

I know more than most people flipping the used bins, but I'll occasionally look at Discogs to see if something is worth what I'm about to pay.

But I agree that no nothing flippers who horde a huge stack of cheapos at Goodwill just to look up each one in Discogs are the bane of the earth.

 

Yep -- you went with your instinct, gut, and experience and pulled out a winner!

DISCOGS is a great tool, to be honest, and I use it frequently. I just think, as stated above, it is gauche, rude, and insulting to whip out your phone and calculate your profit margin in front of a yard sale or flea market seller who is only trying to move stuff for cheap, or in a well-meaning mom-n-pop store who are having enough trouble getting by without inexperienced buyers second guessing their prices...to be honest, most of the people I see it are clueless or inexperienced buyers -- like the guy I saw a while back who didn't bring any cash to a record show and was astonished when no vendors would take his debit card.

 

AMEN!

 

The problem with PREX is that you have to stand in a part of the store that has good cellular without the staff seeing you.

You would think that standing by the front window in the CD section would be a good way to go, but it’s hit and miss. Counterintuitively, I actually have the best luck in the classical section way in back. I don’t want to antagonize the staff or give them the wrong idea.

Like you, I’m not a flipper either, I’m just trying to make sure I’m getting what I want at a reasonable price. Why would you buy a used CD in beat-up condition for $5.99 when AMZ is selling it new and sealed for about the same price?

Plus, I’m often checking to make sure I don’t have the same copy/version of something, or looking to see if there’s an issue with pressing quality. If there’s a forum consensus that the Plain pressing of an Elliott Smith record sucks, I won’t buy it, but I have to know right then.

 

Interesting...never crossed my mind to be in an area where the staff can’t see u at PREX...especially since they advertise free WiFi. Sometimes I’ll take advantage of that when I’m there...but mostly to check pressing info - never pricing info...u can pretty much always expect fair pricing at PREX.

 

Ha, never noticed that.

 

I look at discogs while shopping to check my collection. I don't need to buy duplicates unless it's a substantial upgrade. sometimes it's question of mono vs stereo, etc. It's never a stack and it's a brief inquiry.


...oh, and I'm a dude.

 

The app on my phone that I use most often when browsing yard sale and thrift store vinyl is YouTube. Amazing how many private press albums and really obscure records have a video of at least one song on YouTube that someone has bothered to upload. As I don’t carry a turntable everywhere I go, it’s nice to be able to hear a sample of the obscure album I’m holding in my hand before throwing down a few bucks on it.

 

I've done that, and I've googled for reviews, and as others have mentioned, I've occasionally checked my Discogs want list to see if there's anything I've forgotten to look for or -- and this complaint from the OP honestly just sounds like sour grapes -- if I want to make sure I haven't already bought it.

For example, a lot of older jazz sessions got reissued under different titles, and I might want to make sure this Prestige LP isn't something I already own under another name on Riverside. Same with Brazilian artists--a Jorge Ben LP might have been released under different names in Brazil and the US, and it might have gotten reissued under a THIRD name in Europe recently. And yeah, sometimes I straight up don't remember if I've bought something or not. The jazz duo Jackie and Roy released something like 36 albums over three decades. I'm not gonna remember the title and cover of ALL of them.

The issue isn't using Discogs, or any other app, in a record store. It's being a dick in a record store by getting in people's way. Don't be a dick and you'll be fine.

Also I hope that guy at least listened to that Marcos Valle album before flipping it. It's one of his best, although Previsao o Tempo is my favorite.

 

I pulled out my phone in the record store yesterday - not to look up the value of the record in my hands on Discogs, but to check the balance in my checking account to see if I had enough cash on hand to buy it. But I’m sure the store owner thought I was looking at Discogs or popsike.

On the issue of looking at Discogs, popsike, eBay or whatever, it is what it is. In my head, I already have a pretty big database of what’s collectible and valuable and what isn’t, but, I do have a phone in my pocket, and if more accurate pricing information, or a review, or a sound sample of the music in question is available on Spotify or YouTube, I’m going to look it up, sorry. I’ve pulled out my phone to double check whether the matrix numbers on a copy of the Stones’ Hot Rocks are the right matrix numbers for the variant pressing featuring Eric Clapton on Brown Sugar. I know enough about records in my head to know that that’s a variant pressing that’s out there, but if I can pull out my phone and verify it, I’m going to do so.

 

Oh, forgot one other reason. If I'm not shopping with my wife and I run across an LP that's in one of her collecting specialties but not mine, I'll text her a picture of the album cover to ask if she has it. She does the same for me if she's record shopping without me.

 

Just wanted to publicly thank you for characterizing your wife as a fellow collector and (most importantly) fellow human being -- not as a relentless shrew consistently raining on your proverbial parade, as so many people on this board are wont to do.

 

Although a record might only cost $1, it will take me time to clean it on my ultrasonic machine. And then more time to give it a proper listen. This is where the discogs app can come in handy. If reviews/ratings for the album are low, then I usually won't bother buying it.