Saturday April 17th was Record Store Day. For those who do not know what Record Store Day is, it’s where music fans are encouraged to shop at their local independent record store to help support them. Major labels then supply these stores with exclusive products such as limited edition vinyl, cd reissues, etc. to help lure fans into the shops.
This year’s Record Store Day was no exception. Some of the exclusive product included a 7-inch vinyl single of Elvis Presley’s “That’s Alright Mamma”, an exclusive new Blur song (you can download it for free at www.blur.co.uk), the Muse Discography on vinyl, and an exclusive John Lennon Singles Bag. This bag includes three 7-inch vinyl singles of the songs Mother, Imagine, and Watching The Wheels, three postcards, a poster, and an adapter to hook up to your record player to play the vinyl singles.
For anyone who knows me, they know that I am a MASSIVE John Lennon fan. So when I found out about this exclusive release a month ago, I became really excited about it. (Additional I am a big sucker for vinyl.) So on Record Store Day, I headed out to my favorite independent record store, Hyde Park Records. When I got there I immediately started looking for this singles bag and could not find it.
Finally I asked one of the employees if they had any behind the counter. He told me that they had ordered some, but had not received any. He proceeded to tell me that he had called other record shops earlier in the morning, to see if they had any of the exclusive product left, and they were all sold out. I was super bummed. But long story short I was able to find one at another record shop for $20.
Later in the evening, I decided to go on eBay and see how many of these Lennon single bags were up for auction. To my surprise there was about two pages worth of them, ranging in price from $25-$70. Here is where I have mixed emotion. I love eBay and have bought many things from it. Whenever I am looking for something that is hard to find, or I want to do some comparative shopping, I go to eBay and usually find a good deal.
But the flip side of eBay, the thing that really irritates me is people purposely buying something (concert tickets, exclusive albums etc.) just to put it up on eBay, and then charging triple the price for the item. It’s like with ticket brokerages, when a new concert goes on sale, the brokerage buys as many tickets as they possible can, just to resell them at a higher price on eBay or Stubhub. All the while, you can’t even get two tickets in the nosebleeds because the brokerage is hogging up all of the server space. It’s absolutely insane.
Luckily I was able to come out ahead…this time.
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