Features

Saturday Deluxe / 3 August 2024

Rough Trade upset fans and Chartwatch

By Paul Sinclair

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101

Rough Trade upset fans with Flip Vinyl initiative

Music fans have poured scorn on Rough Trade’s newly touted ‘Flip Vinyl’ initiative (announced yesterday) that sees the legendary indie retailer entice collectors to “swap your pre-loved records for cash” via a collaboration with German outfit Flip Vinyl (described by RT as “one of the fastest-growing second-hand vinyl buyers in Germany”).

In theory it’s a good idea. You simply sell your records via the Rough Trade website in the same way you normally buy them, by adding them to your shopping cart and completing the transaction. You then print off a free postage label and pop the package into your local Evri Parcelshop collection point and get paid five days.

The problem is, the sums being offered are but a fraction of the item’s true value, and people have been quick to point this out on social media. By way of example, Rough Trade will pay you just £10.06 for the 8LP Nirvana Nevermind super deluxe box set. Since this box set was only released little over a year ago, Rough Trade still have this on sale. They are selling it new for £189.99!

David Bowie’s Five Years 13LP box set from 2015 is now extremely rare and has been out-of-print for a long time. So much so that the cheapest copy from a UK seller on Discogs is currently £800, and even that has “shelf wear”. The median price on Discogs is £626. However, Rough Trade’s Flip Vinyl portal is offering you an insanely low £9.28 for the same item! That’s about 1.5 percent of Discogs median price.

FlipVinyl will only pay you £9 for a vinyl box set worth many hundreds of pounds

By way of comparison, a good second-hand record shop should give you somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the item’s true retail value, depending on a number of factors including condition and how rare/valuable the item is. You are not, of course, getting the ‘full value’ but fans accept this because clearly the record shop needs to made money by selling it on and it’s a relatively easy way to shift vinyl or CDs (compared to going the eBay or Discogs route).

This FlipVinyl initiative has been described by fans on social media as “insulting”, “indefensible”, “pure profiteering”, and “an absolute rip-off”. In fact, Rough Trade felt compelled to follow up and defend the scheme yesterday with this tweet:

“Please note! We appreciate this service won’t be suitable for everyone’s needs i.e. those seeking to maximise collectible items. However for anyone looking to trade casually for a quick turn-around i.e. to make space, then this could well be a great solution.”

This did little to change anyone’s opinion and in fact rather poured fuel on the flames. Surely RT will feel compelled to have a serious rethink, or simply ditch this idea that has so antagonised their core audience.

Update: 16.00 BST 3 Aug: Rough Trade have announced they are suspending the FlipVinyl service “to reassess” and say “they understand and appreciate these criticisms”.

Chartwatch

It’s so quiet at the moment, in terms of releases (and reissues), that Eminem’s new album The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) remains at number one in the UK for a third week, with a paltry 10,757 sales! And according to Music Week, of those 10k+ sales only 105 units were actually physical sales (all cassettes!). Remarkable.

Blur’s Live at Wembley Stadium album entered the UK charts at number 6 but The Police’s Synchronicity reissue only went in at 30, which is slightly disappointing for what is a great reissue (see the SDEtv unboxing). Having clearly agreed to the project and supplied all those very cool demos, Sting did zero promotion which can’t have helped. With less than 3,500 copies of all formats sold, the concern here is that future Police box set plans will be scaled down or cancelled, because the demand is not there. Let’s hope not!

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101 Comments

101 thoughts on “Saturday Deluxe / 3 August 2024”

  2. I have been buying and selling second hand vynil for decades, always for fun, never because I had to. Generally, it has been a buyer’s market for many years. Discogs made the market much more transparant, which is good for buyers, not so much for sellers, obviously. Nowadays, since about 2022, it has become a seller’s market, mainly, in my opinion (meaning, difficult to prove), because of inflation. Sellers – as in many other markets – saw that you can up the prices, beyond the inflation index. I use Discogs a lot, but not for selling. That I do on Catawiki, which is more fun and suspens. I stopped buying on both, because of the above reason. And because, for the second time, I have the idea that I really have all and everything that I want on physical formats. Nice, satisfied, soothing feeling …

  3. Prices of secondhand vinyl have been ruined by the values listed on Discogs. Who determines this value? It is often a price determination that is based on nothing. When determining the sales price of second-hand vinyl, record stores that sell & buy second-hand vinyl first look at the virtual value on Discogs. Conversely, you can count yourself rich with those prices, which are often far from realistic. But you never get the price you want. It’s just like art: someone once determined the price of e.g. a painting. Usually with two fingers in the air. This has now seriously ruined the second-hand vinyl market.

    2. The values of records listed on Discogs are not made up. They are based on the prices achieved on sales made on Discogs. If you make the effort to look you can then see the sales pattern. The price of Second hand vinyl fluctuates, sometimes quite wildly for all sorts of reasons i.e. geographical location of vendor or buyer, condition, whether that particular artist has died of made a comeback. A good example is Queen’s A Night At The Opera. Original copies of this have always been easily available and prior to the film a few years back sold on average around the £10 mark. Following the success of Bohemian Rhapsody the price rocketed to around £40. It has since returned to a more realistic price. Personally, I find it more difficult nowadays to find a bargain in a record shop or a record fair than I do online.

      1. Yes I think that’s the bigger problem, when shops start trying to follow Discogs prices without accounting for condition, geography, outlier high prices etc.

    3. I’d say that the prices of second hand vinyl have been ruined by the discovery that the market can survive simply by catering for people who have huge spending power. And despite the current climate of economic diffculties and the ‘cost of living crisis’, there seem to be plenty! (I’m glad I built my Prince collection in the 1990s (looking through bargain bins), because it would cost me a fortune of I tried to do that now …)

  4. This is only the tip of iceberg at what goes on inside Rough Trade. They charge a fee for up coming bands for their ‘on the rise’ feature….not nurturing and supporting artists as they seek to make a name for themselves but take a fee for ‘helping promote’ them.

      1. The Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street did it on a weekly basis… If you wanted your new cd single displayed prominently (ie a whole shelf) in the New Release section and could pay… (2K but my memory is rather hazy about the amount).

      2. And, pretending to be down with the kids, while in fact being just another bunch of money grubbing bread-heads is another tried and true business model. They can stick the whole rotten concept up their foundaments, Berti.
        Flippin’ Hell ! (Which l am pleasantly surprised no one else seems to have typed.)

  6. I don’t think I know any Eminem fans who have bought one his albums since The Marshall Mathers LP, once they discovered they could download it for free that was that, so that makes sense not many physical copies of that album are shifting.
    Regarding the Police, hopefully those sale numbers don’t hinder any future projects, I’m sure it’ll sell more as we closer to Christmas, I haven’t got around to buying it yet but I will.

    1. Not many physical copies are shifting because its currently only available on cassette (with around 1600 copies sold so far) – the CD is released on 13 September, with vinyl to follow on 25 October.

    2. I remember Pre-ebay days when Eil.com weren’t a “dot-com” and they used to send their stock sheets to you in the post. All purchases were by cheque!
      They were great then, but now I wouldn’t buy from them at the prices they ask – but it’s up to them what they want to charge – and clearly enough people are willing to splash the cash. It’s supply and demand.

  8. To quote Stiff Little Fingers song Rough Trade, ‘We were betrayed, betrayed, betrayed, betrayed, betrayed by Rough Trade lies’.
    ‘Nuff said!

  11. To quote David Hepworth in his book “A Fabulous Creation” :
    “the fall off between the Police’s singles and the rest of the material was so steep it’s difficult to imagine anyone playing it now”.
    So to stuff a box set full of demos and outtakes is surely going to make playing (or buying) it even less likely.

        1. Agree, and we had a debate on here a few years ago around the synopsis that the Police were a singles band, which I disagreed with. Regatta/Zenyatta and GITM are excellent albums in my book. I am a bit tempted to try the Synchronicity box set if only to persuade myself that the clunker tracks are worthy if you hear the demo versions. Still wish they’d started the campaign with a different album and then this would’ve been the ‘completist’ purchase down the line.

          1. The Police were always a bunch of chancers, they surfed in on the UK new wave despite being old enough to be most other bands dad’s, and made albums so padded out with filler that they’d put Freddie and The Dreamers to shame!

          3. I see you can’t let go of this.The Police were a great band.Calling them out because they were a bit older than the other new bands at the time is ridiculous as that has nothing to do with the music.
            The albums were terrific.Some filler but mostly great stuff way beyond the singles.The music has stood up for over 40 years which says a lot.
            I’ve got the Synchronicity box and agree with Paul that it is the best reissue of the year so far.That opinion will only last until my deluxe version of Neil Young Archives Volume III arrives though.

          4. Sting & Stuart Copeland are both less than a year older than Joe Strummer.

          5. As they say , age isn’t just a number it’s a state of mind . Joe hadn’t spent his time playing in jazz and prog rock bands then dyed his coiffure blond to make himself look like something he wasn’t .
            Actually Andy Summers (by far the oldest) was the best thing about The Police , you had to admire the way after battering away for years on the periphery of the music business he grabbed his chance , even though he had to tolerate being in a band with two people acknowledged as being a pair of the most irritating musicians a hard working and talented guitarist should ever have to put up with .

          6. I am a bit tempted to try the Synchronicity box set if only to persuade myself that the clunker tracks are worthy if you hear the demo versions.

            Be a ‘bit tempted’ not to. Here’s how:

            1. Go to Spotify
            2. Listen to the covers of ‘Three Steps To Heaven’ and ‘Rock And Roll Music’
            3. Reflect that the Goombay Dance Band would likely have made a better fist of covering the songs with integrity (and enthusiasm)
            4. Stop being tempted

            The Police were more than just a singles band. Period. But they are not one of those bands that quality control everything on an album and were seemingly quite happy to slap in filler wherever they ran dry on quality. Their backward pub covers band efforts on these two songs lay bare their modus operandi.

  12. To release the $100+ Police box in the middle of summer when everyone is more concerned with vacation budgets and away from home is just odd. To maximize sales this should have been released towards the end of the year when everyone is looking for Christmas gift ideas. It’s a great box set but the marketing of this release is simply snowed under by people enjoying vacation away from home, the Olympics, Tour de France, Euro 24 etc.

  13. Flip vinyl seems like a service to be exploited by thieves or appealing to vindictive parents or ex partners, wives of dead record collectors etc who’s only goal is to rid the space of the undesired belongings sold, at pittance pay. Looks like the old music magpie model previously used for cd’s.

    1. If you’re having any financial troubles or are vulnerable & maybe you want to sell that old painting thats been in the family for years ‘for a quick turn-around’ – i’m happy to take it off your hands for £150 (then sell it for £350,000 as its by John Craxton, a painter most people have never heard of but who sells for £££££, but then you wouldn’t know that & hey i’m not forcing you to sell it, you just have no idea of the actual value of what you’re selling…)

      Not everyone is aware of the value of things. A friend who inherited some vinyl when their parents died contacted one of these post-in services as they had no idea of the value of the items & it was easier than listing hundreds of items on eBay/discogs & they weren’t experienced with eBay etc. They were offered 1/500th of the actual value of the items. It wasn’t until they mentioned it to me that i could tell them that what they were being offered was daylight robbery. ‘Nobody is forcing people to sell’ isn’t the point.

  15. (somewhere in here there’s a comment about cds…)
    The “problem” with second-hand record shops is that they are staffed by people that know about vinyl. They have no concept that cds can be collectable in themselves eg Simon Le Bon’s Drum, Act’s Chance cdsingles – I could go on…

    1. The ‘problem’ with second-hand cd’s is that 99.75% of the cd’s out there in the world are not collectable from a rarity/value standpoint.

      1. If you are referring to Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, Dire Straits etc cd albums and scratched/marked cds then you are probably correct that they do make up 99.75%.

  16. Superb piece on Flip Vinyl, Paul. So well written and researched to make those killer points. If this work has led to the suspension of Rough Trade’s practice then you’ve earned a big gold Blue Peter badge with this. Keep up the campaigning.

  17. A couple of thoughts on the Police box… releasing it at the end of July can’t be prime selling time, seems quite defensive almost like looking to avoid the toughest competition. And I can’t be the only person who found ongoing issues preordering from Amazon over the last month… despite being listed as available for preorder, it would repeatedly get bounced out at checkout as “no longer available from this seller” (Amazon itself) and customer service were hopeless in addressing it. I wonder how many vital preorders that lost them!

    1. That was exactly my thoughts as well. I’m here in the U.S., and I pre-ordered it from Barnes and Noble because I get $ rewards for future orders, it can sometimes pay for a book or eventually another box set. It went straight from pre-order to back order come the release date, with no sign of when it would be in stock. This Friday I canceled that order, as the arrival date they posted was obviously not going to be met (tomorrow). My two local record shops I go too didn’t even have the 6CD set listed anymore, and the vinyl set also disappeared from their sites yesterday. I ended up going straight to Universal’s site, udiscover, and they said “it’s on the way” in an email, but the tracking number only shows that a label was created. Seems like distribution problems?

      1. I went to my local record store when it opened on release day and asked the manager if they had the 6-CD box when he unlocked the door. He walked me over to their only copy which was $110 USD (vs $125 on AMZ that day) and I purchased it. Before I left someone else came in asking for it and all three of their locations had sold out of it already. This box was a ‘day 1’ purchase for me despite knowing it would likely go on a deal at some point. The Police are not a singles band. ‘I Still Buy CDs’ too.

  18. I personally would rather have seen an expanded set for Zenyatta Mondatta. Synchronicity may have been The Police’s most commercially successful album, but it’s also the least interesting of the band’s albums.

  19. The 2 cd version is cheap but the second cd is a bit meh, that could put off casual buyers like me. They could have put the demos on that and sold more units but the big bucks are in the box sets.

  20. Interesting regarding the much quoted 750+ sales on Amazon of the Japanese SHM 6CD box. Does anyone know whether they count towards the UK sales figures? If so and if they are cancelled, this figure will drop by 750. If they don’t, I wonder if there is a vested interest now in fulfilling them to maintain chart position etc.

    I’ve stopped being shocked by record industry machinations in 2024 but at least RT realised their error in entering the last days of Rome techniques.

  21. Synchronicity may be their commercial peak…. I was fonder of Ghost in the Machine, a purer Police release. Sure, there are great songs on Synchronicity but IMO a few clunkers too, which I wasn’t used to encountering on a Police album.
    Flip Vinyl are clearly bottom feeders with an eye strictly on the bottom line, nothing more. I suppose RT figured if they didn’t sponsor the FV initiative someone else would….”money changes everything”.

  22. Didn’t know anything about Flip Vinyl. I’m on their email list and boy do they send me a lot of emails – every day and sometimes multiple times per day (usually the final one of the day will be round up of the ones they sent earlier in the day – overkill or what. Never received one about this service though. Strange.

  23. Nice to see that the response to basically mugging the consumer by Rough Trade, is at least being reevaluated. You knew you would get less than a standard record store would give you, because they can’t actually see the true condition of the item being sold AND there is shipping, handling, etc to consider.

    But.. there is less.. and then there is virtual organized theft.

    As far as Police.. I saw the Deluxe set.. and went.. GREAT.. then I saw the price and went.. guess I will pass.

    Guess a lot of others did that as well. So if/when I can get it at a more reasonable price, I might take the plunge. The opposite of what I chose to do with the upcoming APP release.. where I grimaced, pondered… and decided to go ahead and get it.

  24. When Rough Trade started they paid all employees the same wage irrespective of what job they did.

    To go from that model to this is almost unbelievable really. Would love to hear what Geoff Travis has to say about this new development.

  25. Bit of a double edged sword for The Police, they probably chose the most commercially successful album to start with but there’s a risk interest will wane as they work backwards through the other four. I’m probably going to get the CD box, and will be interested to see what comes with Ghost In The Machine and Regatta de Blanc. As far as chart positions are concerned, I’m not sure many £100+ reissues have scaled the heights but 3500 across all formats isn’t setting the heather on fire either.
    As for Rough Trade, it appears they’ve ditched the Flip Vinyl nonsense

    1. It’s always an issue. What do you go for? Forwards from debut, backwards from swansong, most commercially successful or most famous and respected.

      Although I am getting this and I am NOT a Police megafan, I don’t think it’s their most enjoyable album or the one that represents what they stood for the best. I trust what you say Paul in that it is the most commercially succesful which I am guessing was driven by the USA.

      So, not being a megafan and not being in the music industry who am I to suggest they should have started with one of the first 4 albums which are (IMHO) better. Why not chronological?

      1. I would’ve liked them to start with the first album, if only to maybe FINALLY get an official release of the Vinyl Villains bootleg! (soundboard recording from the Rock Goes To College appearance at Hatfield Polytechnic and live debut of Message In A Bottle)

      2. Hi Chris. On subject of selling on your vinyl, I remember you mentioning you had got a very fair price for your old collection. Hats off to you as you are the only one I’ve ever heard say that. Everyone else I know got pennies. Just to clarify, that does not justify ripping people off cause ‘everyone does it’, just commenting that’s it’s refreshing when this doesn’t happen.

    2. Not really , given the speed of releases so far & the fact that Sting is 72 i’m not sure he would want to wait another 15 years of wading though the lesser albums before he can get to the popular ones.

  26. The chart entry of the Police box set shouldn’t be considered disappointing when cost is factored in, people don’t have the disposable income that they used to have and that is not a product that people are casually going to say, oh, yeah, I think I’ll pick this up.

  27. This reminds me of when I went to a Carfax store here in Atlanta 20 years ago and asked for a quote for them to buy my very nice low mileage roadster sports car. I knew the real trade-in value was about 18k, but I asked them anyway. They offered me 11k, and I knew perfectly well that they’d retail it out for 22K. I declined of course, but it was a good lesson in how NOT to sell a used car. I’ve never given a car dealership my business since then. Always sell your things to the END USER, never the middle man.

    1. Sorry, but no business in their right mind would be shelling out 18k to make a hopeful 4k, from which taxes and overall expenses would be incurred. That’s just madness. If the trade-in value was 18K, then they would need to be selling the car for at least 30K to make it worthwhile. Your 11K on a 22K retail is pretty good.

      1. I think you’ve missed the point of this post, which is to eliminate a middleman if a higher end price is desired. It’s a very relevant point in this discussion. I remember the used CD market of the 90s very well. No one forced anyone to sell used current CD titles to used shops for $3-$5, that was a decision the consumer made independently, regrettably or not. No one was forced to off CDs they paid $15 for weeks before deciding to trade it–and it’s the used shop’s perogative to resell it for whatever they choose to. The very same applies to Rough Trade. Sell used vinyl or not, buy used vinyl (sight unseen, no less!) or not. All entirely up to the consumer. Complaining about it after the fact is foolish.

  28. Wow. So what’s going on with Amazon? The Police and the Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense” Deluxe editions that were supposed to be delivered on July 26 were pushed back. The Police was pushed back to the middle of August, but was delivered by July 28 (???), and Stop Making Sense will be delivered on August 12. Are the record companies manipulating the dates for a better position? Rather frustrating…

    Is this something everyone has experienced or just the US Amazon customers?

    1. Wonder what their supply chain issues are. Both recent Howard Jones reissues (with 5.1, and Atmos on some tracks) were perpetually pushed back stating ‘supply chain issues’. One they eventually cancelled, the other I went ahead and cancelled and bought both at a brick and mortar store (at an elevated price).

      Glad I snagged the talking heads Deluxe from my local record store instead.

    2. I ordered both the 6 CD and 4 LP box sets from Amazon US, and they both arrived on the release date. Got some money back too on the 4 LP with the pre-order price guarantee (but oddly not on the 6 CD even though the price went down on that also).

    3. I think it’s more to do with the the logistics of selling goods from back-of-beyond warehouses to residences all over the world, rather than record companies worried about chart placings in 2024.

      The smaller the projected sales, the more difficult it is to move the product around and the lower the priority it is for the likes of Amazon to then shift it.

    4. The ‘Stop Making Sense’ 4K deluxe is on its second pressing. Unless you pre-ordered it then if it’s delivering mid-August it’ll be from the second run. I have friends who pre-ordered direct from A24 & received it weeks ago.

  29. I’m sure there’s plenty of jilted girlfriends or widowers who don’t care about the value of a record collection but are happy to have some extra space for some shoes!

  30. Shouldn’t really be surprised at Rough Trade given that it’s been happening for years with CDs – where you will get pence for a CD.

    Would rather give to charity so they can get the profit.

    The other option is to go via eBay and class the item as ‘very rare’ …….

    1. There is a different between getting fair value for an item, and get extremely lowballed. Used CDs don’t sell well, unless they happen to be quite rare. Lots of record stores just say, sorry – no thanks – to them. Same for LPs that are not in great condition (again, unless they are quite rare).

      And.. the price you can actually get reselling an LP varies. If it sells quickly – great.. you put it at a price to make back your investment, and a quick small profit. If it sits for a long time… you are either absorbing the cost of having it sit there… or more likely – you are marking it down.. and down… until it actually sells… and that might not even be for what you paid for it.

  31. Maybe a SDE used or sealed section for sales could be an option Paul !!, it would allow people with excessive amounts of purchases to make a fair price on their items or allow members of the SDE to sell items to others on here and take a bit of commission for your site?. I’m not getting any younger and have bought loads of material over the past 15 years that I haven’t even got around to opening never mind playing (Kate Bush Remastered in Vinyl springs to mind!!). I’m sure a lot of members are in the same situation. I would guess you haven’t got the time though but it would be a great thing to consider. I do have that sealed Bowie box and the Beatles in Mono vinyl boxes in cardboard packaging that I’ve never opened didn’t realise they were worth that much. The RT flip thing really seems to be a non starter, you would have to be really desperate to consider selling things for such low figures!.

    1. If he doesn’t have the time to chew the fat with rockstars, then I don’t think he’s got the time to punt your old copy of agadoo.

  32. Is it possible this initiative is not for actual music fans but a means of attracting the many, many vinyl buyers of recent years who were simply picking up a hip object they had no practical use for?

    The ones who just use the download code and put a picture of their ‘vinyls’ on IG then let them gather dust?

    No real music fan would go for this even if they were desperate.

    1. That’s interesting. Which is the “real” music fan? A jaded over-spender with a collection of £100. box sets that they’ll never open, or someone with 12 CDs by unfashionable acts in the car that they’ve nonetheless played through to the plastic?

      1. Is there no middle ground between then? Maybe people who buy vinyl because they prefer the format and actually play it? And thus know that it has more value – personally and objectively – than Rough Trade put on it.

        Your 2nd definition is a bit of a head-scratcher. What’s the relevance?

  33. That sort of stuff has been going on for ages. A store like CEX will give you a penny for most dvds. Then they sell it for £1 or even £2. It amazes me that people actually bother. I’d rather just give them away to a charity shop. It’s a constant rip off. It’s best to sell your stuff privately.

    1. True. I took about three dozen pristine DVDs to CEX and, after waiting ages and ages while the assistant input everything and printed out a list, I was offered 87p. Idiot that I am, I took the money on the basis that I couldn’t be bothered to cart them back home, despite there being a charity shop right next door.

      To be fair to CEX, putting a DVD on sale for £1 is not the same as selling it for £1, and it’s likely that they’ll sit on multiple copies of the same disc for months if not years.

      And not that I’m entirely condoning what Flipvinyl are doing, but you have to factor in that they’re presumably buying sight unseen, and what arrives in the post at their end might not even be saleable.

  34. An offensive and pitiful offer from RT. When you could just give your records to a charity shop such as Oxfam who would be more realistic about the value of perhaps slightly overpriced them.
    If Flip Vinyl was the only option for selling on used vinyl personally I would be tempted to just bin the vinyl!

  35. From the figures we could see, the £30 set sold 700+ copies before it disappeared.

    That’s 20% of current sales. Mostly all (of us) hanging on to see what happens….

  36. Their are a few alternatives to this Rough Trade initiave which can be found easily online and they offer a similar process. I have not used them so I can’t compare prices. But Rough Trade seem to be taking a liberty preying on collectors hard times by offering peanuts, the examples shown make you want to cry.
    I have a massive collection that at some point will have to move on, too many to go via eBay apart from some definate collectables so what else can one do.
    I remember back in the 70’s and 80’s we had many second hand music retailers in every town so one would be able to negotiate a decent price for anything good, we also had record fairs regularly to do the same.
    These days a lot of my collection sits in dusty boxes and taking up space but parting with them is so hard to contemplate, every single item has a memory attached of a time and place.

    1. ‘….but parting with them is so hard to contemplate, every single item has a memory attached of a time and place.’

      Forget about leaving a digital trail on line – looking at my collection activates an analogue memory bank of the whole of my life.

    3. When I moved from US to Australia about 13 years ago, I had to sell the entire vinyl collection (since the weight-volume ratio was so punitive, just shy of 2000 items, lots of 80s 12″ and rarities blah blah) – the act was physically painful and left such an ache in my chest, as every record was a memory of growing up, various events in life, etc. Sold to a local store, got a fraction of what it was “worth” (whatever that means) but needs as must and I was essentially satisfied with the process and necessity of it at the time. But damn it is hard to part with those tangible, touchable memory traps…

    1. Just saw there’s a minimum sale of £50 as well, so you’d have to be shifting a lot of records to make it to that mark if they’re only worth a couple of quid each.

  38. I had a look at Flip Vinyl on RT yesterday, I’d find it hard to understand why anyone would want to sell here, they have a great reputation, I’m surprised by this as it seems a touch exploitative. I’ve only sold a few items on eBay , it’s is a pain, I think the process they have of selling records seems brilliant, really easy, but the prices, no way.
    I do wonder what would happen to my collection if I left this mortal coil early, I have left a few instructions, but I can see why the ease of offloading a collection quickly would appeal to a non collector, as long as there’s a few quid coming in. In fairness to them, let’s give it a while and see if it settles into a more sensible way of selling records that’s beneficial for buyer & seller , I hope it does.

    1. You touch on a common theme with some of my fellow collectors… what happens to our collections when we pass on. This is where we need to understand.. much of the value WE place on these items.. are not necessarily shared by the masses. For the most part, buying vinyl as an asset [if you are not actively running a business around it], is a fools errand.

      I know my kids would pick out a handful of items that would mean something to them.. and then the rest would get unloaded at pennies on the dollar. Esp true for my vast Tears for Fears collection. I have a few things that will hold value.. but I have SO MANY variations, etc.. that most people just won’t give a rip about. And.. many of the big collectors, who competed with each other for some items, driving the price up… either have them now already (no competition, no price jump), or are no longer adding to their collections.

      I’ve already had a couple of fellow collectors pass on… we are hitting our 50s, 60s, 70s…. its not like a bunch of new collectors are really going all out for some of these older bands, to compensate for our generation losing interest, or simply passing from the world.

  39. It would have been a great week for a band to put out an album with new material and get a top 10 by the sounds of it! On the subject of Synchronicity, I fear you might be right regarding further releases. I do wonder why Sting doesn’t think it was worth a little promotion to help the curation of The Police legacy and reward those that have invested in the project. Amazon UK’s shambolic £30 Japan version can’t have helped anything. I “bought” that and like many others still remain in limbo with no release date and unlikely to come, but still not cancelled. I don’t want to fork out £75 for it while there’s a (tiny) chance of the £30 one. Even that £75 price for the “UK” one has been jumping up and down most of the week to £90 and back which again does nothing to inspire pre-orders. It suggests people should wait and probably get a bargain.

  40. I think the Synchronicity reissue is just too late. Had it been issued for the 25th anniversary, it would have been in the wake of a hugely successful reunion tour and there would have been some wind behind it. Add to that the standard conditions – it’s the summer, physical sales have dwindled in the exact way that you describe and we’re still in the midst of a protracted cost-of-living crisis. Given all that, 3500 actually feels decent!

      1. I suppose it’s swings and roundabouts because as you say they wouldn’t have put out a big super deluxe in 2008, so this being the first ever extended reissue should make it more of an event.

        (I’m a neutral observer here because I’ve never been a fan of the band)

    2. They released certifiably after their reunion tour,bluray was the best quality possible! So can’t have everything at the one time.

  41. Rough Trade, should really know better and I think this is something that will fail. Music buying people and certainly everyone on here know their music and it’s value.

    Surprised about the Police charting. I’ll be honest I will be buying as it looks very tasty and the content will no doubt be enjoyed. I think the summer months can have a bearing as peoples finances tend to be geared towards holidays etc. Even now as much as I want this box set I will be waiting till end of the month.

    I think purchasing the Cure Acoustic Greatest hits may have caused me to hold back on the Police.

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