Saturday, July 21, 2012

WTF!?!? Amoeba Barfs On Los Angeles

BEWARE A STORY ABOUT A GUY NAMED EDDIE

Years ago I was involved in a small claims case and was in a court room watching the other cases as we waited for our turn.  One case involved the sale of passenger jet parts which had been marked as having failed inspection.  The party who had sold these parts was suing his purchaser.  The purchaser claimed he had no obligation to pay since the part serial numbers had been identified as belonging to failed and disposed of parts.  When the judge asked the plaintiff where he got those parts in the first place, the plaintiff replied, "Out of the back of the van from a guy named Eddie."  The judge dismissed the case and informed the plaintiff that she would be reporting him to investigators.

I barely held my water, thankfully an understanding bailiff stood over me shushing me as we both attempted to keep our composure.


Be very suspect of any story where a guy named Eddie is involved.  


HOW TO SELL YOUR TRASH

My dark side has been tempting me for years to try this one but now Amoeba Records of Los Angeles has gone and done it.  By my sensibilities, what they've gone and done is taken the crap someone accumulated over the years and are now attempting to sell it off as a sort of one of a kind collection.  This is the stuff I periodically wheeled to the dumpster at my storage - spoken word, jazz, easy listening, tango (I don't care what country it's from, nobody cares) and just . . . well . . . crap.

Disclosure:  I am momentarily out of the record dealing business, however I plan on returning soon.  I have very little record inventory, and none of any value over $100.00. A bigger part of what I'm currently dealing involves a massive accumulation of paper goods - yes, big announcements forthcoming.

But records will always be my first love.  And really, why did I never think it would be Amoeba to first attempt to create some hype around what over my years has been food for the dumpster monster.  But apparently Amoeba's dumpster monster had reflux.

Let's do a little analysis shall we, since the truth is always a defense:

Here is a link to one of several posts Amoeba Records has done about their accumulation:
http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2012/07/jamoeblog/amoeba-acquires-eclectic-treasure-trove-of-30-000-lps-eddie-s-record-collection-part-i-.html

I'll compare the records mentioned on the above link to others on the internet where available, in order.

The Poetry Of Langston Hughes LP appears to be the only one, on the page where Amoeba hypes the 30,000 LP find, which has any potential value.  There is no record on Popsike or Musicstack of this LP having sold, so it has no definable value, though a few copies are on Amazon and other sites where sellers are asking around $100.00.

Craig Moerer's Records By Mail has the Shady Brook Ziegfeld Follies record in mint condition, several of them, for around $15.00 each.

Again, no record of the Pagliacci LP set having sold on Popsike or Musicstack, though one on eBay DID NOT sell for $3.99.

A language course LP?  Really?  Unless Warhol did the cover, who cares?

I'm skipping the Edward R Murrow LP because I've thrown out more of those than I care to remember.

The Peter Giger LP is available on GEMM for $4.00.

The pricing on a few of their spotlighted items, like the Brother Ahh and Barbara Lea, appear to be mid-range of what Popsike reports as having sold at auction.  Nothing unusual or noteworthy strikes me about finding a few $100 items in a bulk of 30,000 records.

And as for the transport effort, I'll have Amoeba's story beat about seven times over . . . coming soon.










1 comment:

Carol said...

www.vinylbooty.com ... These guys have lots of soul albums and until recently vinylbooty.com has focused primary wholesale records sales (think orders of $200 or more). They are now offering their catalog on a more retail friendly site. For every record listed they have links directly to recordsbymail, Gemm and other competitors. Their grading is very fair and they have a pretty good selection in 14,000 albums.