[most of the
places that I used to buy from online are not in business
anymore, or have ceased in their price competitiveness with The eBay
and Amazon Z-shops, so that's all I'm going to list for now.]
The ultimate place to get the best deals on the internet.
But
in order to do so, you must have two traits: patience and
determination.
This is THE place to get a clue how much people are really willing to
pay
for most titles. It's also a good place to see just how "rare"
some
CDs really are at any given time. A lot of CD albums appear quite
frequently and are really not rare at all, but just high
in
demand and always go for $15 to $20 when they do show up. But you
will see that many
other
rarities are over-hyped on the internet or other music collector's
forums
based on the average bids they go for on eBay. On the other hand,
a lot of people really enjoy throwing away money here, so don't jump to
conclusions about a CD based on one auction. The rarest CDs will
consistently go for real high amounts, and believe me, there really
aren't
that many which do, with the exception of demo or super rare
independent items that frequently go for insanely high amounts.
One other reality is that in order to reliably observe the final
selling price of a certain title, you'll need to "survey" it to some
degree. Copy the auction number of several auctions of the same
title over a period of a few weeks or months and see what they end up
going for after the auctions conclude. With all of the last
minute/last second bidding that goes on, you never really know what an
item is going to go for until after the auction ends, and you need to
have the numbers copied and saved if you're not planning on monitoring
each auction during the last few minutes, which would be a pretty big
waste of time IMO. Many times, an item with a low bid will
double, triple or more in the last 10 seconds of the auction. I
have observed that many CDs will have a period where they enjoy high
demand and high bids for several months or years up to a certain point,
and then their average bids just drop off the chart after most of the
people searching for it have got a copy. I had an experience like
this very recently where an item I wanted that I had previously not
seen go for less than $100 the very few times it was listed over the
last several years suddenly went for $50 (to me!) but that was with the
minimum bid in the auction set at $50, which can be a major detractor
to high bidders and the occasional bidding war. And you've got to
use common sense as well.
Be a little hesitant to make high bids for items sold by a seller with
a feedback rating of less than 10, especially if they only hold
auctions rarely and sporadically. If a rarity that normally goes
for real high amounts has a real low bid late in the auction, then it
is probably a good idea to check the
seller's
feedback for recent complaints or read the auction very carefully to
check for key words that you might have missed ("front insert missing",
"CD skips", "promo copy", etc). If the description doesn't have
certain
keywords, like "mint" or "scratchless", then assume a CD will have some
scratches. Even nice sounding phrases like "good condition" or
"great
shape" mean very little. I had a seller recently tell me their
interpretation of the word "pristine" was "used but usable" which is
not what I have always interpreted that word to mean when being applied
to CDs. Also, if the seller is holding multiple
auctions, unless you see phrases like "save on shipping by winning
multiple
items" or something like that, then assume you might have to pay the
advertised
shipping rate for each auction you win, and they will of course ship it
all together and try to make a little money off shipping. 'Cause
after
all,
it's all about money to many people. The automatic eBay checkout
system is set up to charge the base shipping rate (up to $3) for every
auction won unless the seller prepares an invoice with a reduced
shipping total. So be sure that a multi-item shipping rate is
stated in the auction, or that you confirm it with the seller before
bidding on their items - I recommend not accepting more than $0.50 to
$1 per item after the first - before making the assumption that winning
multiple items means you'll save on shipping. If you've got a lot
of patience
and a semi-tight pocket book, you can often get some oustanding deals
on eBay.
But that's a really big IF for some.
Amazon.com has become the new home for price comparison for me
and I imagine many other collectors as well. For me, that
benchmark used to be Walmart to a certain extent...for
non-music-related things, that is. But now, with the convenience
of online shopping combined with the understaffing of cashiers at
Walmart and many other stores not as popular as they used to be,
Amazon.com has stepped up to fill that void, and very ably so. I
guess in the long run, this would be equivalent to the continued
computerization of our lives and society, reducing the cost of commerce
but also removing the need for people to perform certain tasks for us,
which is not always the best thing if the customer support staff of
these websites is not up to the job. But Amazon seems to be doing
a great job so far in my experience, and I don't expect that will
change any time soon. The individual seller Z-shops in Amazon are
the best place I know of to see if a CD is likely to have any real
"worth" on eBay or elsewhere that the market is accurately
reflected. If you see 10 copies of a CD in Amazon Z-shops that
are listed for $0.01 (i.e. $4 after shipping), then the CD is probably
too common, too unknown, or just not that sought after to give it any
value over a few dollars if not sealed. And with the abundance of
record labels and growth of the industry over the last two decades, as
well as the rise of digital downloading, even sealed CDs don't have
much more value than used CDs anymore since a used CD in excellent
condition can typically be ripped with no errors just as well as an
unplayed CD. As with any other place, beware of scammers and be
sure that you're really buying what you think you are. Use the
feedback percentages to choose, and if you have an unsatisfactory
experience, leave appropriate feedback so that future buyers can be
alerted and not buy from sellers who may be listing things in their
shops that they do not have or that are listed on other forums and
where the order may get cancelled unexpectedly. There's also many
rare Christian titles on Amazon that are being advertised as available
"on demand" through CD-R manufacturing. So if you're looking for
an original silver pressed CD copy, most OOP CDs are still OOP, and the
only sellers who have them are the ones in the Z-shops that are
offering used copies and the occasional new copy for exhorbitant
prices. This doesn't mean that the music on these CD-Rs isn't
just as good or in some cases better (remastered, etc.) than a pressed
CD, but if you've come to this page, you're probably like me and prefer
to only pay more than $5 to $7 for a legitimate physical copy, silver
pressed if available, of a music album. If you're looking for a
particuar CD version of an album, you'll need to expend the little "+"
sign next to the list of available formats. Sometimes the Amazon
page for an original CD pressing can be difficult to find through a
simple Amazon search. You'll have to spend some time, but I think
it's pretty easy to get the hang of once you've been doing it for a
while. BTW - If you like what you see and experience on Amazon
and think you'd like to buy regularly from them, then Amazon Prime is
essential for the best shopping experience there. It can seem
like a big bite out of your bank account or credit card at first, but
once you see how much you can save and how nice it is to be able to get
things regularly in 2 days with it, you probably won't be able to live
without it.
Happy hunting!
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February 2021 |