Manship's Price Guide - 6Th Edition

[boba]

I would have thought a very basic guide could be done using Excel.

Data could be sorted by artist,label,price.

The find function could be used instead of scrolling thru.

kegsy

a spreadsheet cannot reasonably handle that amount of data. you could specifically use google docs to share a spreadsheet with multiple users. I have a google doc with about 5000 lines and that is slow and clunky. You need a real database to deal with any real amount of data. I think Excel even used to have a 65536 row limit until relatively recent versions.

[boba]

HIS BOOKS ARE WHAT THEY ARE GUIDES PRICES ARE NOT SET IN STONE BY HIM .

They are effectively set in stone if people use the books as bibles and set their prices based on the book, no matter how many times he says they are guides. Almost no dealer that is the target market knows that the prices are supposed to include VAT and are for only mint records from a top dealer.

Either way, this isn't a criticism of manship. I'm glad he was able to put a large discography together and it's a good business move given the paranoia of US dealers giving up rare northern 45s for nothing -- he has a huge potential market. Another positive is that he doesn't really steal information from other sources like certain other books do, so at least the books are not filled with BS listings and misinformation. Thinking about it, that actually is one of the most positive things about the book. I think he generally only lists things that he has physically had or at least seen. I think he should get a good US distributor that US dealers can buy from, especially given the hefty shipping costs of a heavy book.

[Kegsy]

a spreadsheet cannot reasonably handle that amount of data. you could specifically use google docs to share a spreadsheet with multiple users. I have a google doc with about 5000 lines and that is slow and clunky. You need a real database to deal with any real amount of data. I think Excel even used to have a 65536 row limit until relatively recent versions.

I agree a real database would be the ideal solution,I was in I.T. for

25 years and designed dozens. A database is just a way to catalog data, its the

organisation/structure of the database that makes it work, this can be complex

or very simple.Given that the number of fields, artist,title,label,price is pretty small

the database would be very simple. Anybody with a half decent knowledge of Microsoft access

could knock the database structure together in about an hour.

To overcome the problems you describe with Excel,

you would simply have a different spreadsheet for each letter of the alphabet (artist name).

Not ideal but workable.

The main problem would be, as it always is, the entry of all the data.

Kegsy

Kegsy

Edited November 4, 2012 by Kegsy

[boba]

I worked as a database programmer for over 15 years. Access isn't really an option unless someone put a custom web interface together for it and host the app somewhere, it's not trivial. There is more than just a data / design issue, there is also a collaboration issue. You could potentially create 26 google docs spreadsheets (as you suggest) and share them; that solves the collaboration problem.

[Kegsy]

I worked as a database programmer for over 15 years. Access isn't really an option unless someone put a custom web interface together for it and host the app somewhere, it's not trivial. There is more than just a data / design issue, there is also a collaboration issue. You could potentially create 26 google docs spreadsheets (as you suggest) and share them; that solves the collaboration problem.

Yes I accept your collaboration/multi user access issues, locking etc.

Maybe Access wasnt a good example, but there must be

some simple to use database software with internet access protocols, without having

to go the full blown Oracle route. I've been out of the game for seven

years so i'm not that up to speed anymore I'm afraid.

Dont ISP's have standard client/server database interfaces ?

kegsy

[Chalky]

The excel document I have for a database has over 20,000 lines I think? I have A&B on one line in separate columns though, not as two lines.

[Kegsy]

The excel document I have for a database has over 20,000 lines I think? I have A&B on one line in separate columns though, not as two lines.

That would go a long in solving the problem of loading the

data into any database. Depending how it is formatted your Excel file could be used to

automatically put the data in !. It would not

have to be typed in from scratch. i'm sure others on here

also have catalogs like that even if its only

their own collection, I know I have.

Kegsy

Edited November 4, 2012 by Kegsy

[Guest Nick Harrison]

All in all - we must never loose the sight that John's hard work was instrumental in cleaning up a huge grey area within our scene.

Generally now used as a daily point of reference or a tool of education - for the lesser concise.

Used more as a cross checking 45 authentic reference - it works as a major authority.

Misused as a documented price book - then your a chancer.

Edited November 4, 2012 by Nick Harrison

[Kegsy]

All in all - we must never loose the sight that John's hard work was instrumental in cleaning up a huge grey area within our scene.

Generally now used as a daily point of an educated reference tool for the lesser concise.

Used as a cross checking 45 authentic reference - it works as a major authority.

Misused as a documented price book - then your a chancer.

Depends on your point of view.

I hated it when it first came out and U.S. dealers got hold of it.

I'd spent years finding U.S. sellers and getting bargains in terms of UK sales price.

That all went down the tube.

kegsy

[Guest Nick Harrison]

Depends on your point of view.

I hated it when it first came out and U.S. dealers got hold of it.

kegsy

And misused as a documented price guide then your a chancer, is this not so in keeping with your post !!

[Kegsy]

And misused as a documented price guide then your a chancer, is this not so in keeping with your post !!

Not really I was buying at the U.S. market price, not my problem

that they were ignorant of values over here. By your definition every collector, dealer etc who bought from

the states back then was a chancer.

Not so those that did just used some nous,

anybody could have done it.

By the way I still have most of the records I bought.

Kegsy

[Sebastian]

And that is the clear reason why the bootleg section has been omitted from edition 6 - due to the extra increased paper material cost.

It wouldn't surprise me if the reason instead is that Manship plans to issue a standalone detailed bootleg guide again sometime soon and want his customers to buy both the price guide and the bootleg guide.

[Guest Nick Harrison]

It wouldn't surprise me if the reason instead is that Manship plans to issue a standalone detailed bootleg guide again sometime soon and want his customers to buy both the price guide and the bootleg guide.

Indeed another edited addition of companionship - Sebastian.

[Mach]

Shame he dont do a hardback copy..its alright sat reading it at a table, but awkward on the sofa, gotta be careful about ripping the front cover off whilst your going back and forth

[Sebastian]

Indeed another edited addition of companionship - Sebastian.

Personally I think it's a shame that I now will need two books for something that I only had to use ONE BOOK to do earlier.

But I totally understand him from a business point of view and I will buy a bootleg guide as well if he decides to produce a new one.

Edited November 4, 2012 by Sebastian

[pikeys dog]

It wouldn't surprise me if the reason instead is that Manship plans to issue a standalone detailed bootleg guide again sometime soon and want his customers to buy both the price guide and the bootleg guide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LBIsDBC848

About 2 minutes in...

[MrsWoodsrules]

I agree a real database would be the ideal solution,I was in I.T. for

25 years and designed dozens. A database is just a way to catalog data, its the

organisation/structure of the database that makes it work, this can be complex

or very simple.Given that the number of fields, artist,title,label,price is pretty small

the database would be very simple. Anybody with a half decent knowledge of Microsoft access

could knock the database structure together in about an hour.

To overcome the problems you describe with Excel,

you would simply have a different spreadsheet for each letter of the alphabet (artist name).

Not ideal but workable.

The main problem would be, as it always is, the entry of all the data.

Kegsy

Agree Kegsy, the hard work is actually imputting all that data, unless it could import previously made lists.

I manually imput a database of Manships rarest into some aution searching software I have, it took me days & days & was mindnumbingly tedious.

Aid.

[Kegsy]

Agree Kegsy, the hard work is actually imputting all that data, unless it could import previously made lists.

I manually imput a database of Manships rarest into some aution searching software I have, it took me days & days & was mindnumbingly tedious.

Aid.

A bit like freebasing/politics on here then ?

kegsy

[Guest soulwaxusa]

I will not be buying this one. I bought all the others. The last one was usefull for the bootleg info so I will keep that edition. Problem is that for the most part the majority of his prices are totally unrealistic. It's Fantasyland or Manshipland if you prefer. I'd love to get the prices he shows in his book for the records I sell. Waste of money at this point in my opinion especially when you can easily go to Popsike or Collectors Frenzy and get a more realistic view of a records value along with it's price trends (up or down). I can put my hard earned dollars to better use and go out and have a nice dinner or better yet buy a nice record.

[Guest Gogs]

Shame he dont do a hardback copy..its alright sat reading it at a table, but awkward on the sofa, gotta be careful about ripping the front cover off whilst your going back and forth

Had this problem with my 5th edition. Cover been sellotaped back on so many times that it's more tape than cover.

[boba]

I will not be buying this one. I bought all the others. The last one was usefull for the bootleg info so I will keep that edition. Problem is that for the most part the majority of his prices are totally unrealistic. It's Fantasyland or Manshipland if you prefer. I'd love to get the prices he shows in his book for the records I sell. Waste of money at this point in my opinion especially when you can easily go to Popsike or Collectors Frenzy and get a more realistic view of a records value along with it's price trends (up or down). I can put my hard earned dollars to better use and go out and have a nice dinner or better yet buy a nice record.

not saying anything about the book, but have you noticed popsike has been losing tons of data recently? it's becoming way less useful. collectorsfrenzy still doesn't search descriptions. i might eventually have to pay for that stupid worthpoint site (even though it is fairly new so doesn't have much back data).

[Guest Bearsy]

It's easier to find out any queries you have on here no need to trawl through a book so many sell from but never buy from price wise lol. Looks good and like records it's become a collectors item :-)

[Marc Forrest]

as some mentioned they would like to see a price guide online: tim`s guide has been online for quite some time now and its easy to access via https://www.raresoulvinyl.co.uk I also understand that his intention was to update here and there with new prices

Re JM latest edition: I bought it as I bought all the previous editions too. so far I must admit I havent found any benefit the latest edition has to offer in comparison to its forerunner. havent had time yet o compare prices in # 4 and # 5 so I cant comment on the aspect of price updates.

[John Reed]

I'm wondering if I'm the only one with this view of the guide. People have mentioned the time and effort needed to compile and document this guide, well I think that's in material as I'm not convinced that much manual effort goes into creating it, outside of John just running his day to day business.

John, like with the majority of retailers will have computer based stock inventory system which sits on top of something like a SQL or Oracle database and is one of the reasons you can buy and pay on-line. The information in the book is just a simple query from that database.

This database would also be used as a starting point for valuing his stock as he'd need that for insurance purposes and when generating turnover and other information for year-end accounts. So for me the price guide is just another way of squeezing as much value out of his business as possible and if I was in his shoes so would I, as its just good business sense.

People also say we know the prices are out of line, well I've never thought that's an acceptable argument as people are paying £30 for this book which isn't cheap and it is sold as “a price guide”, so should really be in-line with reality. Otherwise its just an incomplete artist discography book and we know there are more complete discographies on the internet that people can access for free.

Edited November 5, 2012 by John Reed

[boba]

I'm pretty sure his book is not auto-generated via queries from a database

[grant]

I will not be buying this one. I bought all the others. The last one was usefull for the bootleg info so I will keep that edition. Problem is that for the most part the majority of his prices are totally unrealistic. It's Fantasyland or Manshipland if you prefer. I'd love to get the prices he shows in his book for the records I sell. Waste of money at this point in my opinion especially when you can easily go to Popsike or Collectors Frenzy and get a more realistic view of a records value along with it's price trends (up or down). I can put my hard earned dollars to better use and go out and have a nice dinner or better yet buy a nice record.

not a big fan of price guides either, when i try and sell people want stuff for nowt, and most of the time when i buy people want top dollar

[Kegsy]

I'm pretty sure his book is not auto-generated via queries from a database

Maybe its just a complete printout of the entire database, thats

very easy to do.

Kegsy

[paultp]

You don't need a price guide to find out the price of a record you just need to put the record up for sale on here.

If it sells - you underpriced it

If it doesn't sell - lower the price

[Kev John]

I wonder if Tim Brown will do another price guide ?

to complement JM's book

[KevH]

JM's price guide is out.!! We're all doomed i tell ya.

[Guest turntableterra]

Back when JM introduced his new (current) website, I remember that mentioned here on soul-source that he was working on setting up an online service similar to the price guides, and this online service would include sound clips for a lot of tunes. That would have been a great improvement. On the old JM site, you could even hear sound clips of titles that had been sold in the past. On the new one, it’s only possible to hear stuff that is actually for sale.

He must have dropped the idea because it’s a good while since he mentioned this, but that could have been a nice service. But of course, youtube has become a serious competitor in this field

personally i wouldnt be putting my 40 years work and information on the world wide web.......one day some one may hack into it and just add to it and print there own book. why would you do it. id be protecting my work. printed in england to and a canny few done. then of course we wouldnt have the anticipation of waiting on the book. and the interest it generates in our music. its a great read, i just love this sort of thing, indeed any music reference book (just in case you were all thinking of a pressy for me, or a jd bryant !)

[Pete S]

Back when JM introduced his new (current) website, I remember that mentioned here on soul-source that he was working on setting up an online service similar to the price guides, and this online service would include sound clips for a lot of tunes. That would have been a great improvement. On the old JM site, you could even hear sound clips of titles that had been sold in the past. On the new one, it’s only possible to hear stuff that is actually for sale.

He must have dropped the idea because it’s a good while since he mentioned this, but that could have been a nice service. But of course, youtube has become a serious competitor in this field

i just love this sort of thing, indeed any music reference book (just in case you were all thinking of a pressy for me, or a jd bryant !)

Didn't you write the intro?

[Sebastian]

personally i wouldnt be putting my 40 years work and information on the world wide web.......one day some one may hack into it and just add to it and print there own book. why would you do it. id be protecting my work. printed in england to and a canny few done.

Anyone that publishes anything in any format runs the risk of getting their work copied or bootlegged.

Printing a book is one of the worst things you can do if you're desperate to keep your knowledge to yourself. Anyone can copy it.

While on this topic it's interesting to note that the fictitious "made up by Manship" Dee & Joe 45 on BIG SIX which Manship included in his guide as a "tender trap" turned up in another major UK price guide that has been mentioned in this thread. The info was obviously copied from Manship's book. More info here:

Edited November 7, 2012 by Sebastian

[Pete S]

My opinion is that the book doesn't need to be so big as it is, and this could be done by excluding anything that's £15 (maybe even £20) or under, this would make a massive space which if necessary could be used for the bootleg guide, which everyone agrees is extremely useful. The lower end of the collecting scene is full of thousands of records that you can't give away let alone sell.

[Chalky]

Trouble is, if it isn't in the guide some will assume it is a mega rarity and want a daft amount you see it now in listings, "not in the guide".

[Guest soulmaguk]

On the other hand Chalky, if its not listed in any guides, and is in an ebay auction it can go for peanuts. Whether it will be rare or not will remain to be seen over time if a demand for it comes about.

Edited November 7, 2012 by soulmaguk

[Premium Stuff]

My opinion is that the book doesn't need to be so big as it is, and this could be done by excluding anything that's £15 (maybe even £20) or under, this would make a massive space which if necessary could be used for the bootleg guide, which everyone agrees is extremely useful. The lower end of the collecting scene is full of thousands of records that you can't give away let alone sell.

Gotta agree with you on that one Pete - excellent observation

Cheers

Richard

[Chalky]

I'd like to see one the size of the record collector guide, it wold be thicker but wouldn't bother me....I'd still like to see the iPad/iPhone app. I wouldn't like to see anything omitted, they are a great reference guide (label, artist etc) irrespective of the price.

[Guest]

Why tell the Americans everything the Northern Soul scene has learned and worked to find out, in 40 odd years?

Then go and try and buy records from them!!!

Crazy!

[Cheapsiderecords]

I wonder if Tim Brown will do another price guide ?

to complement JM's book

I was at a show on Sunday and a dealer I had some modest success with in the past had suddenly marked up all his common Northern and Motown stuf. When I asked him about the prices he pulled out Tim/Martins guide!!

I subsequently put my handful of 45's away and wished him luck.

I can count the Soul/Northern collectors in my area on one finger so I did not see any benefit to him doing this, 45's are just going to sit there now.

Edited November 7, 2012 by newer

[Godzilla]

Why tell the Americans everything the Northern Soul scene has learned and worked to find out, in 40 odd years?

Then go and try and buy records from them!!!

Crazy!

On the other hand, why try to pretend that the knowledge isn't out there.

[boba]

Why tell the Americans everything the Northern Soul scene has learned and worked to find out, in 40 odd years?

Then go and try and buy records from them!!!

Crazy!

if i were a record dealer anywhere in the world with a lot of backstock and could create a guide that effectively set prices I would

jerry osborne supposedly sold off all his soul 45s so he wouldn't have a conflict of interest in adding rare soul to his (crappy) record guide

[John Reed]

Why tell the Americans everything the Northern Soul scene has learned and worked to find out, in 40 odd years?

Then go and try and buy records from them!!!

Crazy!

I've never been a fan of going on about having to graft for 40 years on the Northern Scene, to allow you to be inducted into the "Inner circle” of record buying. Are you saying that if you haven’t grafted for 40 years you’re not entitled to the buy a record at the same price as someone who has and that people who have are entitled to shaft people who haven’t?

[Dave Pinch]

well its been a good read for me on my holidays... some prices have gone up..some havent altered some are low probably because john hasnt had a copy in years....if any body has a mist on twinight for 100 ukp or pandella kelly for 15ukp i`ll take them..quite a few things still missing tho..... i wish i hadnt sold the new wanderers..3000ukp lol....still a very good guide and not gospel read tho imvho

[Pete S]

well its been a good read for me on my holidays... some prices have gone up..some havent altered some are low probably because john hasnt had a copy in years....if any body has a mist on twinight for 100 ukp or pandella kelly for 15ukp i`ll take them..quite a few things still missing tho..... i wish i hadnt sold the new wanderers..3000ukp lol....still a very good guide and not gospel read tho imvho

Happy to see Bob's Band - Locke's Theme - Atco finally make it to the guide! £70, about right.

[dthedrug]

My opinion is that the book doesn't need to be so big as it is, and this could be done by excluding anything that's £15 (maybe even £20) or under, this would make a massive space which if necessary could be used for the bootleg guide, which everyone agrees is extremely useful. The lower end of the collecting scene is full of thousands of records that you can't give away let alone sell.

HI ALL In part I agree with your piont, however as we all are aware most collections are not filled with £100+ rare soul 45s and some of the lower priced records become big bucks?

also it would put many people of if they were trying to value their collection if many records were not in the price guide???

[Guest]

I've never been a fan of going on about having to graft for 40 years on the Northern Scene, to allow you to be inducted into the "Inner circle” of record buying. Are you saying that if you haven’t grafted for 40 years you’re not entitled to the buy a record at the same price as someone who has and that people who have are entitled to shaft people who haven’t?

The people who are having to pay are record buyers, by people who want to keep the prices as high as posible, even if it means telling all of the Americans everything!

Edited November 8, 2012 by Guest

[Godzilla]

The people who are having to pay are record buyers, by people who want to keep the prices as high as posible, even if it means telling all of the Americans everything!

I think you're conflating the way some items are priced with the amount they actually sell for. Dealers can price as high as they like but buyers eventually determine a realistic price. Top end rarities are an exception but as others have stated on this thread, mid priced records consistently sell for below any 'book' price. Also it's not 1978 anymore.

Edited November 8, 2012 by Godzilla

[Russ Vickers]

All in all - we must never loose the sight that John's hard work was instrumental in cleaning up Lol

[Russ Vickers]

Long before the 'price guides', a DJ/Record dealer friend would put a huge priced 'wants' list out all over the US, I mean this was a book !!!. The UK 'big' record dealers of the time really f^ckin did one, I mean really did one - what had happened was, said person had pretty much blown open the NS pricing mystery of which discs were collectable, not just the obvious, many of the old guard of dealers went ape sh*t, as they had been 'stealing' these records for years, it had now been spoiled for them, however my friend got some absolutely amazing records over a period of years......the price guides are the revenge, turning it all on its head again....

Russ