boba

they took away the "send message" button from the user's personal page. You still can send them messages by going to your messages and composing a new message and putting the user's youtube ID as the recipient.

i'm not on there but fryer mantis is / was the main funk forum. i heard there's a new one? someone here should know.

what was the date and whose auction was it? the context is important. also, i'm guessing that chris is selling not buying

I've actually had the confusion between 80s Parises. Paris on Kelli Arts is Paris Holley. There's another 80s Paris record, a cover of love makes the world go round, produced and recorded in detroit. I have no idea if it's the same person. There is another Paris soul record, a singer who had one single on Uni in like 1969 and who had an unreleased Uni LP. At least that Paris is chronologically closer.

was this one of the things that jimmy radcliffe's son was selling copies of here?

maybe you already did this, but i imagine people at a funk forum would have a better idea. the popsike entries are funny because the late 2009 sale copied the text from the 2006 sale, including text about how the record will be included on an upcoming ace/kent comp.

sick sleeve design, nice.

emailed you

a popular one is frederick hymes - time ain't gonna do me no favors

small mistakes / title variations don't make a real difference in value unless it's a super in demand record, especially if the actual recording is the same.

I also have a huge stack of failed gambles -- e.g. people selling hard rock, country, or other music not even remotely soulish as soul

I like how you turned the thread into an ad

I would agree, except instead of saying "baffled" I would say "pleasantly surprised". That's what I live for on ebay, obscuro stuff that may or may not be good. It's like gambling except you are also making an informed choice. The people selling that stuff often can't even judge what is good or not anyways, and they're often junker dudes so you're gambling on condition, packing, etc. What pisses me off is when real record dealers put up one side of the record (say a mediocre funk side) and refuse to put up or even answer questions about the other side.

I'm am not trying to single you out. In the same post I said I was making a generalization and not targeting you specifically. I apologize for writing "you" in that sentence, I should have written "people" or something similar. Sorry. EDIT: I edited the post you responded to not say "you"

I agree with you, that is very annoying. When stuff goes lower than the average it's a "bargain" but if stuff goes super high, that's the new price. And what makes it worse is that there's a lot of buyers who for some reason only want expensive records, so increasing the price actually increases the demand, which can up the price even more.

the magnum is fake kool and the gang sounding stuff, the LP came out on CD a while back. One of their two 45s is expensive for some reason. I have a double of the other aftermath, it's pretty cool psychedelic funk about drugs. I'm sure you know the great expectations 45, as it's the most common thing on the label and also came out on phila of soul.

people are criticizing his buyers though (which was part of the same sentence). I was also making a generalization about the frequent posts about high prices, not saying that you specifically dislike him. There are also lots of posts about people bidding too high on ebay and calling the buyers idiots. So I guess you're right in that the focus is more on hating on the buyer. Also, sometimes (again this is not directed at you) criticizing his buyers or calling them stupid is indirectly criticizing him as it implies he's taking advantage of people. But the criticism comes across as jealousy when people could be making more specific criticisms (for example, "he should not be auctioning that item because it is common and has a fixed price") rather than just ranting.

I wasn't calling you unethical, just questioning what unethical practices you were referring to since your auction seems similar. Also, you do sometimes have hyperbolic descriptions. But that's standard marketing, I think it's called "puffery". Manship does the same thing and people always make fun of the dusty groove website (probably the biggest offender). I don't think that's unethical as it's pretty standard practice and I'm sure your buyers are not stupid. I actually write really verbose descriptions, but only because I like to talk about records too much. I try to only sell records i like and if there is a record i don't like i'll actually say so in the description which is probably not the best business practice...

I don't disagree with you. That's what I meant by "overcommercialization". But that's not what people are complaining about. Also people do need to acknowledge that dealing records is a business. Sebastian, you are a very good example of someone who has built up a brand and gets much higher prices on certain things on ebay because you have regular bidders. Are you being unethical getting those high prices?

There used to be a lot more music on youtube than there is now, you used to be able to find anything. What happened was that copyright claimants got ebay to clamp down. Users with lots of violations just had their accounts closed without notice. These were users who had like 100s or 1000s of videos up so closing their account automatically removed tons of other videos that nobody claimed against.

I agree, the guitar makes it too rock for me. Any help / info on the 3rd single or group membership? Thanks a lot for your help already.

It's probably true that in a lot of genres the "holy grail" is an average record that has some history/provenance that makes it super rare and desirable. Like the beatles butcher cover. It's not even that rare, it's just built up a reputation as an important record (and has a backstory that makes it seem super rare) so it's the "grail" for certain kinds of LP collectors.

Also, I don't understand the hating on Manship or his buyers for ridiculous prices. He just acted successfully as a businessman and built up his brand so that lots of people trust him as an expert (e.g. via writing a price guide). Anyone dealing records is running a business and wants to make money. I guess you could be mad at the overcommercialization (or mad at him for other reasons) but that's not what people complain about. It often comes across as jealousy. This is not an endorsement of him or anyone else, I'm just saying that if people are gonna criticize they should have a more focused criticism on something, most of the bashing comes across as just jealousy. Also, I'm sure someone who paid 500 pounds for a solomon burke 45 doesn't care what a bunch of people on a message board think of him.

I bet you would have if you had a fancy website that had an auction. Two people bidding against each other takes you out of the equation. You can't honestly put up a 20 pound record for 500 but if you do an auction that the people are looking at (and exclusively, separate from ebay) that might happen. THAT costs a lot of money to have though.

if you had rich buyers you would have money. you can do things for free, like reach out to some of the people and ask for leads on their friends, etc. also you said you have a 1500 person sales list. Aren't there wealthy people on your list? I just started and I have a 100 person list and there's at least a couple wealthy collectors. The problem for me is that if they are actually serious collectors they will already have everything except the ultra-rarities. A different type of wealthy collector is paying a lot of money for common records -- a more casual type of collector.