Vinyl that is impossible to find

Prices for vinyl nowadays are just like the prices for older gear that was pure junk 40 years ago -- sellers on Facebook and EBay slap the word "vintage" on it and think that is worth an extra 80% to the price.

 

I keep hoping I live long enough to see the scalpers end up sitting on thousands of Vinyl releases that they can't sell because buyers wise up and quit paying $50 to $100 for a crappy sounding vinyl album from the 1990's or 2000's that was pressed from a CD source.  How I wish I had a time machine...I had the opportunity to buy out the inventory of several independent used record stores in college town in the 1980's and 1990's.  No telling what gems I could have found.  Live and learn.

I have been buying obscure (and sometimes very desirable) records for years. Short of the FMU show in NY and one year at the Austin record show (still have not made it to the famous show in the Netherlands), almost never find this stuff in record bins. Discogs usually, sometimes, private sites of dealers. Condition is key, and grading these days is loose. I find certain vendors who I will tap into til the vein runs dry or their prices get nuts. There are different vendors who specialize in different genres- for some years, I was buying up OGs of spiritual jazz until that got to be crazy money, especially for the private label stuff. Ditto on the OG Vertigo Swirls, particularly from the UK. The market is still high despite general economy depending on what you are looking for. I've slowed way down in buying b/c of this- and some of the records were simply hard to find- e.g. the OG of Alice Coltrane's Ptah had not been reissued after 1974 until a recent reissue pulled from a digital master. It took me a few years back when to find a clean original though it wasn't "rare" as such- an Impulse release. 

Best approach is dialog with seller unless you know them. Get a sense of what they know, what their standards are, right to return (I hate returning records and explain that). We are talking about some records that now sell in the 4 figures, but I bought them before they hit those prices. Good luck, the hunt is part of the fun. 

I find myself in these situations sometimes, when there's a particular album I want on vinyl but finding a near mint / good+ rated copy on vinyl that isn't absurdly priced because it's out of print, I often look for the first issue CD copy.  For example, the first pressing of Seal's debut album on vinyl can run up to $90 if it's the UK pressing before it was remastered. But the CD version can be had for $10!  I have some albums on CD only because they were released only on CD and decades later are now being reissued on vinyl for $30+. I'm not sure if you entertain the CD listening side of things as far as your collecting goes but I've found them to be an affordable option. 

I had a hard time finding Johnny Adams: a room with the view of the blues, but finally located a clean copy at rare vinyl and received it from the Royal mail service today.

 

Some titles are available on LP, but at a price I don’t care to pay. $200 for Levon Helm’s Electric Dirt, for instance. I saw a copy in 2010, but wasn’t buying LP’s at that time. Time machine, please.

 

Others are much harder to find. Currently I'm on the hunt for clean copies (Mint - or better) of:

 

- Bobby Charles: s/t album on Bearsville Records

- Dire Straits: debut (Vertigo pressing)

- Bob Dylan: Desire (Mobile Fidelity pressing on Super Vinyl)

-    "         "    : World Gone Wrong

- Aretha Franklin: This Girl’s In Love

- The Kinks: mono boxset

- The Latin Playboys

- Aron Neville: Warm Your Heart

- Richard Lloyd: Alchemy

- Tift Merritt: Tambourine

- Boz Scaggs: My Time

- Dave Spillane: Atlantic Bridge

- Television: Adventure

- 20/20: s/t debut

- Tom Waits: Closing Time

- Warren Zevon: Life’ll Kill Ya

- The Care Bears Movie soundtrack (Kids Stuff 3901) in playable condition. It features recordings by Carole King and John Sebastian (with NRBQ providing musical accompaniment)

- The Beau Brummels: ’75

- The Everly Brothers: Roots

- Stained Glass (San Jose, CA Garage Band): Aurora

- The Ventures: In Space

- Chet Atkins: Down Home

- Guy Clark: Old No. 1

- Jim Dickenson: Dixie Fried

- Dillard & Clark: Through The Morning, Through The Night

- Joe Ely: Masquerade

- Bela Fleck: Drive

- Emmylou Harris: At The Ryman

          "               "     : All I Intend To Be

- George Jones & Tammy Wynette: Golden Ring

- The Kentucky Colonels: Appalachian Swing

- The Louvin Brothers: The Tragic Songs Of Life

- Judy Sills: s/t

- Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice: Skaggs & Rice

- Billy & Terry Smith: Ease My Troubled Mind

- Gary Stewart: Out Of Hand

- Marty Stuart: Nashville Vol. 1

- v/a: The Bluegrass Album Volume 1

- Jesse Ed Davis: Keep Me Comin’

- John Hammond, Jr.: Southern Fried

- Albert King: Born Under A Bad Sign (Craft RSD mono pressing)