I have to admit that most of what is being said her is actually very relevant.
As I have said in other threads thre price guides have really not helped us not so rich people pick up very much on our infrequent trips to the states.
But their is a very good point here about the dealers in the UK pushing prices up and soemtimes you cannot blame them as they have chosen it as their buisness whereas we (Myself) its my recreation and not my livelihood.
The main concern for me now is the easy repressing of records by unsrcupulous people in the States and passing them off as originals (Frederick Hymes would be a good example). The particular person involved in selling copies of this record with alarming regularity also admitted to me that he had supplied the main dealers in the uk but none of these dealers have questioned the authenticity of the discs in terms of age and that in my view decreases their credibility to the point of who can you trust if you cannot trust supposedly well established dealers in the uk.
Taking the Frederick hymes as the exanple- I have what I think is an original and the reason is I took the vynil to an expert in the oil industry here(IN Aberdeen) who works in the lab section of a big company and they confirmed through testing that this was a over 25 years old. I then passed another record which was made recently and they confirmed that this was less than 5 years old by their tests. The point I am making is that the copies coming from the US via ebay and according to the us source, reputable dealers are suspect in that thecopies they have circulated would not pass the tests for age of vinyl. - Thats the scientific approach- having seen other copies just to feel them they are thin vinyl and sharp at the end- the print defintion is poor compared to the originals. So I ask if these are represses then why has My Manchips guide for the original of this record been reduce from £1000.00 to £200 in his latest guide.
WHo can you trust? this is my question