Blue Note reissues as an investment?

A few years ago I spent about $90 for the reissue of Rossini's Sonate A Quatro (Accardo on violin) on Philips which was advertised as limited to 1000 numbered copies. Well, about a nine months later, numbers 1001 to 2000 started popping up for sale. Now they're up to 4000. These jerks are just issuing as many as they can sell and putting nice little brass numbers on every box. In this cases I don't care all that much because I bought it for the music, but I'd never spend $50 per disc (or any where near that) for a supposed "limited edition" as an investment.

Classic Records, Analogue Productions, Mosaic, Music Matters - they're just going to keep coming. There will always be supply to fill any major void in demand. Frankly, I think the LP craze peaked (pricewise) in 2006. I have close to 200 sealed records (just because I haven't gotten around to listening to them yet). Some are very desirable - and very very few have gone up in value over the past couple of years.

The Music Matters issues, at almost $60 per issue incl. shipping, are pushing the pricing envelope if you ask me. Is someone going to pay $100 for these down the line? Depends how many are floating around out there. All I see on the MM website is "limited edition". In fact - the 2500 copy figure is notoriously absent from MM's documentation. It seems to appear in all the dealers' literature, but not actually in MM's words anywhere. I don't see any explicit guarantees that the Master will be destroyed and that they won't start re-pressing at a later date.

Also look, for example, at "Mosaic Complete Recordings of Miles Davis Quintet 65-68" - a 10 lp set in unplayed condition just sold on Ebay for $202.50. That's a whopping $22 over the original purchase price. And that's TEN lp's for $202.

I'd buy 'em cause you want them, and leave it at that.

Also re: the numbered copies. If they're pressing 2500 copies of each, I would ask how many stampers they're using. If multiple stampers, it's possible that an early non-numbered pressing from Stamper #2 may be superior to a late-numbered pressing from the end of Stamper #1's run.
If their plan is to run only one stamper - or press directly from the Father - I would definitely NOT opt for non-numbered copies.

There's a lot of randomness on Ebay, and i didn't see the auction you're referring to but that result would be a rare one. The McLean Blue Note sets have averaged around $270-$280 for years. One just went in March for $270, and there's one up right now finishing in a day or two, so watch that one. So they are trading above the original cost. But what made your set a good "investment" was not rising prices, but rather that you bought it at a below market price.

Hi - Oops, for some reason, that set showed up in my search for lp's but I didn't open it to read the description. You can see a list of many past auctions here:

http://www.popsike.com/php/quicksearch.php?pagenum=1&searchtext=mclean+mosaic&incldescr=¤cy=&sortord=ddate&thumbs=

And yes, as a professional stock trader, I would say your point of view is absolutely correct. If you can sell it for $300 and you don't, that IS exactly the same as buying it at that price.

Frankly, if you put it on Audiogon (with a reserve), you might do much better than the Ebay average. Jazz LP's are often going for truly insane prices here - which is a whole other discussion in itself.