The Premise:<\/p>\n
1) Vinyl is now bought purely by collectors, obsessives, DJs and people with too much time and\/or money on their hands. (Which is all the same thing anyway).<\/p>\n
2) Therefore – vinyl is now a tip top commodity (cf: ebay)<\/p>\n
3) People take old vinyl to charity shops.<\/p>\n
4) Other people buy them (see (1) above).<\/p>\n
5) Because of (2) some of (4) may be inclined to pay more. Or to buy vinyl from Charity Shops to re-sell (see (2) above).<\/p>\n
6) Therefore, charities are losing out on revenue.<\/p>\n
The Solution:<\/p>\n
1) Find a volunteer who knows a lot about contemporary beat music.<\/p>\n
2) Encourage him (or her, but let’s not kid ourselves, eh?) to organise charity shop vinyl stock – pricing accordingly.<\/p>\n
3) Purchase “dividers” to categorise stock.<\/p>\n
4) Purchase clear plastic wrappers for 12″ LPs and singles.<\/p>\n
5) Sit back and wait for eager punters to bring in huge amounts of cash.<\/p>\n
There’s only one difficulty with this plan:<\/p>\n
Most records in charity shops are unspeakable dross.<\/p>\n
I occasionally get to travel about for work, sneaking into the odd charidee shop when I get the chance (I don’t normally like to talk about though of course). A couple of years back you could wade though boxes of vinyl and pick out the odd gem for a quid or so. It was worth it for the thrill of the chase and the knowledge that something good would turn up eventually at a reasonable price. Plus, it was a good nostalgia trip seeing record covers from ye good olde days.<\/p>\n
What seems to be happening now is that characters out of Nick Hornby’s “Hi Fidelity” have started working in charity shops and have attached their value system to the stock.<\/p>\n
To all of the stock, whether realistic or not. So the burgeoning and newly-labelled “80s Rock” sections are overflowing with cack from yesteryear, at prices which are astonishing. Is anyone going to pay 4 quid for a Judy Tzuke LP? Or \u00a32.50 for a Curiousity Killed The Cat 12″? Something tells me “no”.<\/p>\n
Flipping through one box like that and you’re out the door – even if you find something vaguely passable, your time would probably be better spent on ebay, at a carboot sale, or in proper 2nd hand record shops in London which have decent stock.<\/p>\n
In both of the towns I’ve visited over the last few days it was a better bet checking out Virgin and HMV, with their permanent “sales” to see what CDs they were chucking out at 3 or 4 quid a pop, than the local charity shops.<\/p>\n
And that’s just not right, is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Premise: 1) Vinyl is now bought purely by collectors, obsessives, DJs and people with too much time and\/or money on their hands. (Which is all the same thing anyway). 2) Therefore – vinyl is now a tip top commodity (cf: ebay) 3) People take old vinyl to charity shops. 4) Other people buy them …<\/p>\n