Why do local record stores charge discogs pricing but not list on discogs?

I’ve helped keep my local record store open by spending a lot of money there over the years, including purchasing records locally that I could have bought more cheaply online. I’m not going to sell records back to my local record store for pennies on the dollar to do him a favor, just like I don’t expect my local record store to undercut the Amazon price for new records by 10% or 20% to do me a favor.

People trade in or sell records all the time for reasons other than treating their collection as an investment strategy. I culled my collection a few years ago when I got married and moved from a bigger house in the country to a smaller house in town. I literally didn’t have space to move my entire collection into our new house. Other people may find that the punk or prog rock records that spoke to them when they were 17 no longer speak to them anymore. Other people may have a health or financial crisis and have no choice but to cash out some of their records.

In all of these scenarios and more, taking $20 from your local store for a record that he can turn around and sell for $80 in his shop, or either you or he could sell for $100 on eBay or Discogs, is idiotic.

 

The other advantage is that you might find something you did not expect to buy. In many ways, discogs is a souless shopping experience, although obviously it works for many people, especially those far from a local store.

 

I suspect those records have been offered to a store at some point. When people hear records are popular again, they dig out their records from their youth and think they are worth as much an original copy in nice condition. Many aren't.

 

I’ve only bought one record from Discogs, because I don’t like the lack of pictures in the for sale listings, and don’t like other things about the site, but I do buy records on eBay and from other online stores such as Music Direct and Acoustic Sounds, because, while my local store is, as you note, great for running across things I didn’t expect to buy, in order to get a mint original copy of Archie Shepp’s Fire Music, my latest eBay purchase, I had no choice but to shop online. Or perhaps wait five to ten years for a copy in similar condition to show up at my local shop, if one ever does.

I thought the “soul” of records was in their grooves and in the experience of playing them and listening to them. While I do appreciate my local record store a great deal, I’m far less interested in the “soul” of the shopping experience for a record than I am in the soul of listening to the record. How I shopped for it means relatively little to me while I’m playing it.

 

Fair points. And you are right, the rarer the record, the less likely it will turn up at a store.

 

Yeah, I'm having a health or financial crisis, absolutely the best use of my time is farting around on Discogs listing albums that might not sell until months or years down the line. I was in that exact situation once, when I needed to pay two months' worth of late rent within 48 hours or get evicted. Discogs (which to be fair did not exist yet, because it was 1996) would not be an option. I had no choice but to crate up about two-thirds of my CD collection to one of my neighborhood locals, take the $950 check with a smile, and go on to live in that apartment for another six years.

I had $100 left after I paid my back rent. I spent it on used LPs at my other neighborhood record store.

 

Yeah, you already mentioned how you don’t get out of bed for less than $60 an hour or whatever. I suppose everyone has his or her dividing line as to the price point at which at becomes worth the hassle of selling a record online. For me, I have to expect a record to bring $50 or more online to fool with it. Anything less than that, I will trade in at the local shop, give away to friend starting out in vinyl, put in the storage unit, or simply throw away. Having sold several records online last year for between $200 and $500 a pop, I can only say it was worth my time to fool with selling those online rather than taking pennies on the dollar to sell them to my local shop. Your mileage may vary.

And if you’re not willing or able to wait weeks or months to get your target price on a “Buy It Now” sale, you can always do an auction, get the record sold in a week, and almost certainly still beat whatever your local record store would have offered you for any record he would sell in his shop for $50 or more.

 

'Old White Guys' is insulting (and racist).

 

On the low end stuff postage is a killer, plus you can't beat pulling out the LP and checking it for yourself in a shop, no disappointment when that VG+ turns up closer to VG-.