You mug!

[Hadrian Elephant]

It's lovely reading about everyones spawny finds and hearing of things they got for cheap, but what about the other way round?

What have you spent too much money on, or didn't buy that you have regretted? Ever traded a ££ tune for one that is worth a lot less?

Here's a few of mine:

I was going through a big collection and turned up an original Exit 9 'Straight Up' LP that the guy wanted £4 for. I listened to it, thought it was ok, but didn't buy it because I had spent too much already.

I traded my spare 'Barely Breaking Even' by the Universal Robot Band on Moonglow with Nick The Record for the 12" of 'Still In Love' by Rose Royce. I thought this was a reasonable trade at the time, but since then everyone I've spoke to says I was a dick to do it.

I left an original Johnny Almond Music Machine 'Patent Pending' at a car boot sale because it didn't have a sleeve. It was 50p......

Similarly I left a copy of the Battered Ornaments 'Mantlepiece' LP at a booter because it was £1.50 and I had a £1.00 limit on buying LP's at bootsales at the time (god knows why in retrospect)

Also when I was first buying funk in the late 80's I got royally shafted over by the owner of Flashback Records in Cambridge and paid well over the odds for LP's that cost a fair whack of my dole money. They are not worth that much more now.
If only I had invested my money in a train ticket to Manchester or a subscription to Soul Bowl/Craig Moerer etc etc

Oh well, you live and learn

[Hooded Claw]

Missed out on a load of ex radio 45's for 25p each before i really knew much about collecting. My friend got most of them... I was the green man that day.

[john stapleton]

when I was at school, my then-girlfriend's school had a jumble sale, and there was a box of 45s there, all 60's demos. I bought about ten - I think they were 10p each - and went for the ones with the psych-sounding names. But I didn't bother with the half-dozen Beatles demos because I already had them as singles. But it was a VERY long time ago.

[**kidsaer**]

i once left that baby huey lp,cause i did'nt know the goin rate was... Sie later told me at £20 it was a fair price and I should have bought it.... whats the goin rate?

[sermad]

I was at utrecht looking through a stall and the guy had loads of libraries that I had never seen. Loads of mad french ones - but they were all priced up. So I left them all as the guy wouldnt let me listen to em.

Later, I brought a mate along who knew a lot more about the french stuff back to the stall. I go to him 'Oh there all crap'. But we carry on digging away. This japanese guy then rocks up and flicks through the next box to us and pulls out this record. Only for mate to go green and go 'er thats the best most expensive library EVER type thing'.

And the japanese guy like pays £30 for it. And it was worth about £200.

ooops. .

And I forgot what it was.

Another story was when I was at a TUC record fair with Ed. This guy had got in a SERIOUS collection of italian records. But again all were priced up. I get chatting to him and he's like 'oh jonny trunk has already bought about 100 already'. I'm like 'crap missed all the heat'.

I wrong I was. There was tonnes left that was incredible but at the time I didn't know better or have the money....Hmmmm thats a familiar story!

[TOWNY]

Quote[/b] (Hadrian Elephant @ Oct. 17 2004,10:58)]regretted?

That signed & dedicated Sam Dees LP Hayd !?

[mik]

I once swapped the Ray Swinfield LP for that bastard Jack Hawkins LP on Plexium. I didn't know about the Jack Hawkins being all shite horrible sound and nothing like it sounds in Get Carter, even though there'd been an article on it in Record Collector which totally neglected to mention that it was unlistenable rubbish record in a bingo hall!!!!!
At least I got the Ray S for £1 and it was a spare.

About 11 years ago in that big round thing in Manchester which was amazing for records I looked at a a version of 'mony mony' and thought, Oh no I don't want a bloody version of that. It was the Mohawks

And a long time ago I swapped my mint Kitty Winter Gypsy Nova LP for fucking Erwin Lehn 'Color' with Jazzman Gerald. Musically speaking, I think a good trade but rarity & value wise, like , thanks mate Got the Kitty for a tenner though so got to look at the bright side.

I think I paid about £30 blind for that horrible Ninchucks Bruce Lee record many years ago too.  

i'd better stop there I'm getting depressed!

But if anyone ever wondered who got all the big UK Kpms & Chappells out of Vinyl Exchange all them years ago - that was meeee Big Beat 2? £15? Oh go on then. Oh look there's another 2. sorry had to do that - felt a right MUG!

[amino]

Four years ago I moved back to Helsinki from Central Finland and I was picking up my last boxes of records on the weekend. I usually went to large flea market everytime I went back to collet my stuff and usually came up with nothing so this one time I decided not to bother. Well couple of days later I heard that some guy had bought the very day a lot of about 500 jazz records in mint condition 1 to 5 euros each. The lot all the original Finnish jazz like Wahoo! and loads of original Blue Notes, Prestige etc records. That hurt.

The other was two summers ago. Our office was in downstairs of this Finnish embassador, who's wife often asked us to move their antiques around. One time a noticed that they had loads of records packed in plastic bags and I was wondering what's the deal. She told that they usually take couple of bags with them when they go to their summer gottage and puts them on sale on local flea market for 50 cents each and almost everything seems to go right away. She added that if I wanted some records I could take whatever I wanted for free. Well, the leftovers were purely classical stuff. I asked about the stuff they had already sold and she told that it was mostly Finnish jazz, Blue Note jazz (which was his husbands favorite) soul and other US jazz and she added that her sister is married with Heikki Sarmanto and he usually brought them records and adviced what to buy in the late 60s and 70s. I'm just wondering what I missed since Mr. Sarmanto is one of the Finnish jazz legends...

:angry: :angry: :angry:

[theeman]

Quote[/b] (mik @ Oct. 18 2004,18:54)]But if anyone ever wondered who got all the big UK Kpms & Chappells out of Vinyl Exchange all them years ago - that was meeee Big Beat 2? £15? Oh go on then. Oh look there's another 2.      sorry had to do that - felt a right MUG!

git!! i missed you (and the bloody Big Beats) by about half a day then nice one chap!

[happy monster]

i left a load of bootsy collins & ojays lp's at a flea market many many years ago, they were priced at between 50p & 75p, although i did clear up all the funkadelic & parliament lp's from the same stall for a simular price.

i also left a john barry beat girl lp at a carboot because the owner wanted £10 for it, again many years ago.

[left hand corner]

Quote[/b] ]Another story was when I was at a TUC record fair with Ed. This guy had got in a SERIOUS collection of italian records. But again all were priced up.  I get chatting to him and he's like 'oh jonny trunk has already bought about 100 already'. I'm like 'crap missed all the heat'.

I wrong I was. There was tonnes left that was incredible but at the time I didn't know better or have the money....Hmmmm thats a familiar story!

I believe that very same dealer did the Reading Record fair just after the TUC one and I believe those very same records you left are now in the hands of local Reading legend Jim 'The Batman' Donovan  

[green man]

Quote[/b] (Hooded Claw @ Oct. 18 2004,10:42)]Missed out on a load of ex radio 45's for 25p each before i really knew much about collecting. My friend got most of them... I was the green man that day.

 

Ahem, I'll excuse the pun.    You didn't miss anything that great actually, a few nice 45s but nothing very rare...

There were a load of library records in the radio studios of the university I used to study at, me and my mates were aware of them for ages but didn't think we could get our hands on them untill one sly git "borrowed" about 20-30 of the best ones including some of the big KPMs and Dewolfes and sold them.
A year later I did manage to obtain all of the other records (about 1000), there was still some good stuff left and loads with sampling potential so I suppose I shouldn't be complaining but it is annoying to see a gap in the catalogue numbers where a big beat should be!

[Lord Thames]

Quote[/b] (left hand corner @ Oct. 18 2004,22:16)]I believe that very same dealer did the Reading Record fair just after the TUC one and I believe those very same records you left are now in the hands of local Reading legend Jim 'The Batman' Donovan  

Is he the man who runs that record shop in the Reading Collectors Centre? I had a long chat with him a couple of months back - ruddy nice bloke! Even bought some stuff off him........

[wayne]

My habit's usually to just pick up anything that looks interesting, blind if need be, but try not to pay too much for anything in particular...so mostly the problem is less leaving things behind at the booters etc, than spending £15 on piles of LPs with nothing on them (or, when flusher, £10 - £15 on one LP with nothing much on it). Still, manage to miss out, especially after a run of bum buys, when the 'sod it, not getting taken in by *another* groovy sleeve, oh no, not for £6.50' kicks in. As it did earlier this year when an LP I'd never heard of and knew nothing about called 'Sundae Times', in minty condition, emerged from the racks of Big Apple, and got left there. I only hope Mr del Toffo was on better form than me that week...

Less a particular LP regret, more a decision to sell my whole vinyl collection regret (forced on me back in 1987 by a move from renting a house to starting over in a bedsit) that does haunt me still. Especially the copy of Andwella's Dream 'Love & Poetry' I let go, not really knowing what it was, after having had it since it turned up in a hardware shop in Heanor when I was doing A-levels there. That shop was ace - had original Nick Drake 'Five Leaves Left' and 'Bryter Later's, loads of early John Martyn, Country Joe & The Fish, all sorts of psych and popsike and folky oddities from there...and got rid of all of it, for next to nothing.

Ah well, they're only records...plenty more discs in the racks...they'll turn up again etc

[Dean R]

So there we were one day in the acid jazz office at 21 Denmark Street London WC2. Another day of inflicting the Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai on the world, and it was getting late. For some reason this left us wondering what the fire exit stairs might look like, so we opened the fire exit and ran into box upon box of records. In fact multiple copies (that's multiple 25 count boxes) of virtually every KPM record, going up the stairs almost to infinity (21 Denmark St is the address you will see on the back of these records). In fact too many to take in properly, so we grabbed a bunch and started to go through them.It was before anyone really collected these things (91?), The Big Beat's were all present and correct, and we started ripping a few of the tunes off, always saying that we really must make sure we take copies of these records home for ourselves.
So on the day that us lazy bastards finally get round to sorting it out, we open the doors and go to get the records we find an empty, swept stair case. The record have gone.
Years later our merchandising guy, who worked a couple of floors above us told me he had seen the records piled in a big skip outside by the owner of the building