junk wax

RWY

Well-known member
Landfill house music from the 1990s

When I used to work in second-hand shops and for discogs dealers, it was mostly this stuff that would appear literally by the truckload and which was impossible to shift - irredeemable, nauseatingly bad Progressive House records pressed in the tens of thousands.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
there's a record shop here that stocks mostly OK used vinyl in the $5-20 range but also has a dozen bins down below the racks filled with $1 albums and 12" singles. the guy who runs the store will let the $1 stock sit there for a couple of months and then literally toss everything unsold into the dumpster. he then restocks the bins with new $1 stuff that's come in lately.

in his mind, he's given it a go but it's such junk that it's not worth taking up floor space for more than a few months. considering that he probably sells a few hundred for $1 and paid only 5-10 cents per record, it's not a bad source of revenue to supplement his main record sales.

this will tell you how much junk wax there is: the owner has an ongoing problem where people will drop off a record collection (could be 50-1,000+ records) they want to sell. since it takes a day or two for the buyer to review them, the seller has to leave them at the store. after a few days, buyer calls the person and makes a cash offer (or says the store doesn't want most/any of them), and the offer is so low that the seller doesn't even want to bother coming back and taking the records back. sellers will sometimes just think screw it, too much of a hassle to go back to the store, load them up and search for another store, or put them out for trash. they just say "ok, great, I'll be in this afternoon" and then are never seen or heard from again.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
follow up to above: I've found dozens of great 12" singles in those $1 bins over the years. the store owner is a rock guy who doesn't know or care about dance music, so doesn't bother to look up current value of all the old 12"s that come in (the vast majority of which are shit). I once found a sealed copy of an obscure house single (Jackmaster Curt "Real Fresh House") for $1, goes for $185 on discogs.
 

chava

Well-known member
Skee Mask and the Zenker Brothers (the guys behind the Ilian Tape label) are playing a lot of Hardcore, UKG, and UK Funky in their sets with a similar effect i.e. opening up these tracks to European and House/Techno audiences.

It's weird how quick the hype around obscure releases get out of hand. I get crazy bids for records I've hardly knew I owned (but registered on discogs) and frankly sound pretty naff to me.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
That's really interesting @Leo I think there is a simple equation with this stuff and rents going up. My local record shop had a whole back room of 50 / £1 stuff but if you're paying by the square foot it is just not tenable to give that much space over to things that just won't sell for much money if they sell at all.

Of course this is exactly the domain of the crate digger, a species that will probably be extinct soon at least in London.

I assume it's not even viable to look through piles of shit records to see how much they are worth on Discogs because your return on investment will be rubbish unless you are very lucky.
 

RWY

Well-known member
I once found a sealed copy of an obscure house single (Jackmaster Curt "Real Fresh House") for $1, goes for $185 on discogs.

Nice - I never found anything as rare as that in the stock I used to deal with but once in a while I would come across a mint condition promo of a fairly collectable UKG record, normally hidden in a box of untouched House promos. Unfortunately most second-hand UKG stock I ever saw was in piss-poor condition and would end up in the bin.
 

chava

Well-known member
Discogs' median price for my entire collection is almost exactly what they initially cost. Of course it will take me years to get that price back, but its's still a bit surprising to me.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
A lot of collectible pop culture stuff would degrade significantly with use - vinyl, books, comics kid's toys, clothes, etc. So there is a natural counterweight to the overproduction issue there normally.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Lots more records in absolute shit condition appearing on Discogs these days. I assume because people want the object and will still pay for it so they can fondle something whilst playing it off Youtube.

Media Condition: Poor (P)
Sleeve Condition: Poor (P)

Both records has scratches, but visually they are more like G+. The sleeve is in a very very BAD condition.
 

chava

Well-known member
Lots more records in absolute shit condition appearing on Discogs these days. I assume because people want the object and will still pay for it so they can fondle something whilst playing it off Youtube.

Media Condition: Poor (P)
Sleeve Condition: Poor (P)

Both records has scratches, but visually they are more like G+. The sleeve is in a very very BAD condition.

That's me. I definitely lowered my standards when I buy records in terms of physical condition. I even appreciate when they crackle a bit more now.
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
That's me. I definitely lowered my standards when I buy records in terms of physical condition. I even appreciate when they crackle a bit much now.

Yeah I'm not dissing it - that discogs entry was for an anarchopunk album with a massive sleeve so you'd be getting some pretty rough music anyway where a few crackles doesn't matter...
 

qwerty south

no use for a witticism
When vinyl started to boom again a 2nd hand record shop opened in Aldeburgh selling all LPS at a standard price of £10 - some stuff that a chazza would struggle to sell for £1

😂
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
When I used to frequent ILM a bit (ages ago, pre Dissensus i should think) I started a thread on Least Collectible Records and the results were interesting, there were different answers from UK and USA. E.g. the Brits would bring up No Parlez and Bros and things like that.

Globally, I should imagine budget classical must be the universal lowest of the low - it has frumpy packaging, the recordings are usually drably done, often it'll be by the Prague City Symphony or some lesser known orchestra.

(One of the things that puts me off getting seriously into classical is that you have to know about which interpretation of a particular piece is the best... well, really you have to get into owning and hearing multiple versions and comparing different conductors from different decades. i can't be fucked with any of that).

by common consensus the Herb Alpert album Whipped Cream and Other Delights was deemed the Least Collectible - meaning, this was the LP that you'd skipped past innumerable times while rifling through jumble sales and junk shops.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
by common consensus the Herb Alpert album Whipped Cream and Other Delights was deemed the Least Collectible - meaning, this was the LP that you'd skipped past innumerable times while rifling through jumble sales and junk shops.

elton john "captain fantastic and the brown dirt cowboy"
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
That's me. I definitely lowered my standards when I buy records in terms of physical condition. I even appreciate when they crackle a bit more now.
Two most consistently fucked vinyl categories - reggae 45s and Miles Davis albums. The people who owned them knew how to party.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Of course this is exactly the domain of the crate digger, a species that will probably be extinct soon at least in London.

i've not really done it as much thepast few years but it's one of the aspects of normal life pre-pandemic that I miss. Being able to go to a record shop, find some random interesting looking rubbish cheap enough to take a punt on. Was almost like a bit of a meditation for me.
 

luka

Well-known member
it fosters a mode of listening and valuing music that i think bad from an aesthetic standpoint. it values the curio and the kitsch and the exotic. i don't mean this as a condemnation of it by the way.
 

luka

Well-known member
it's a junk shop mode of appreciation for the flotsam and jetsam washed up on lifes shores, the ephemera of consumer capitalism
 
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