I visited the Oxfam music shop on Glasgow's Victoria Road at the weekend.
The vinyl prices have gone crazy. What used to be a pound is now three, three now six with some reasonably bog standard second hand records going for upwards of twenty quid.
I suppose they are charging what some folk are willing to pay.And hey it's for charity although I always see Oxfam more as a multi national big business that a charity but maybe that's just me.
I restricted myself to the three CD singles for a pound section with 6 purchases that will feature over the next few weeks.
Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It is probably technically an EP given that it has four tracks
From 1995 on Creation it contains acoustic versions of previously recorded songs.
Here are the first two -Don't Look Back (from Grand Prix ) and Everything Flows (from A Catholic Education)
Tracks 3 and 4 will feature shortly.
Seven quid on Discogs!
Teenage Fanclub - Don't Look Back
Teenage Fanclub - Everything Flows
I used to work in an Oxfam shop and it always pissed me off that they used to make us charge a minimum of £1.99 for bog standard second hand CDs, them look up the value online of anything remotely different and price it accordingly. The whole point of charity shopping is to find a forgotten gem at a bargain price, surely? Their argument was that otherwise people would just buy them for a quid and bang them straight on eBay, so the profit was better coming to Oxfam. However, the result was CDs sitting on the shelves gathering dust because nobody would pay record shop prices for a grubby second hand disc.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, this was a few years back, before the vinyl renaissance, so the majority of LPs we got in were banged out at a quid (although, again, anything rare was priced accordingly... and prominently displayed while it gathered dust). There must be a happy medium that shops like this can achieve, to keep product moving while also maximising their returns. Oxfam, as you say, operated more like a big business, so valued profit more than turnover.
Thanks for the Thea tip off, by the way. For future reference, my email is rolhirst AT gmail. Sadly I failed to keep up the annual domain name renewal payment on my website a couple of years back, so now my name is used to sell running shoes. I feel so used.
Records are often ridiculously priced in our local charity shops. The attitude appears to be 'If it's from the 1960s, price it up at £10-15'. The fact it might be a knackered Black & White Minstrels LP that no-one on Earth would want doesn't seem to enter the equation.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Teenage Fanclub tunes - I don't have this EP.
Certain online retailers are undercutting the charity shops. I've just got a Hives album for 1p, and have recently got 2 Delgados albums and a Whiskeytown all dirt cheap. Our local charity shop here does not sell cds.
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't forget to post the other two tunes. Today's two are splendid
ReplyDeleteAgree about Oxfam and rarely go in there now because it just feels like another high street chain. I can understand why the change has come about as in Rol's comment, but much preferred it when charity shops weren't all kitted out the same with proper shop fittings which presumably those extra £££s are paying for. It was so much more exciting when you had to get down on your knees and rummage but I think I've always been a bit kinky that way.
ReplyDeleteGreat find, CC. Hate hearing about the prices. Pretty tough to run your operation here the way it's going in the charity shops.
ReplyDeleteOxfam have ruined charity shop record shopping. Its absurd.
ReplyDeleteHowever, 'TFC have lost it' is a thing of wonder and beauty.
Both lines of what SA says are bang on.....
ReplyDeleteBut the problem really lies with the fact that so many folk with reasonable amounts of disposable income have increasingly jumped on the vinyl revival bandwagon and any store - charity, second-hand or otherwise is simply responding to the fact that some folk are prepared to pay silly money. Let's face it, old vinyl is just an extension to the antiques business and people are often prepared to pay stupid money for what is just old tat.
I'm certainly buying a lot less vinyl than I did even two or three years ago as I'm not prepared to pay the 'going rate.'