Helm wrote: I have trouble considering which party in the transaction is worse. The person pulling the trick above, or the person that would buy an unknown record simply because someone else paid a lot of money for it.
Exactly, BOTH parties need to know what they're doing! Just because something is LISTED for big money does NOT mean it's worth BIG MONEY. To get a feel for a record's worth, you MUST look at copies that have already sold recently, not copies listed currently as 'Buy It Now'- that info is rather useless. Also, look at the bid history to see whether only 1-2 people drove the price way up; the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place bids can tell you a lot. So can the number of bidders.
John- I don't know of anyone still putting out sale lists, but my connections are not as good as others around here. Why do you say Ebay may not last but a couple of more years? Just curious; I know their policies have become increasingly frustrating to sellers. Do you think people would really go back to the more limited audience they get with private sale lists?
Regarding your question of "what is rare?", I usually think of rarity in terms of scarcity. How many copies were made, how many are available, how often an item is offered for sale, etc. In this sense both Militia and Liquid Earth are rare. There is another factor, 'Obscurity', that affects the value of a 'Rare' item. Non-obscure items are well-known even if they're rare; people have heard about them- they're 'notorious' instead of 'obscure'. As you said, this drives the price up. Obscure items lack that notoriety; most folks simply do not know about them. This may keep the price down b/c many collectors, myself included, don't want to spend large sums on items we don't know anything about. I can't afford to pay $200 for a record that's obscure b/c if i don't like it, then I've got a lot of money tied up in it and it may be difficult to sell or trade; I have to find someone who either is familiar with it and wants it (and can afford it) or someone willing to take a chance on it. Liquid Earth is obscure; Militia is not (it's 'notorious'). Rare items tend to become notorious thanks to circulation on bootlegs, having band members go on to bigger things, etc etc.
"I'm sorry Sam, we had real chemistry. But like a monkey on the sun, our love was too hot to live"
-Becky
