I was reading the thread about paying over the odds for soul records and it got me trhinking of how prices are defined.
There's always lots of reference made to guide books and going rates, but i tend to find that whenever ebay results are mentioned, it's dismissed as being inconsistant and unreliable.
If records are sold regularly at a particular price/price range then is that not the 'going rate'? not what a book produced months/years ago suggests?
Don't get me wrong, i think the guide books can sometimes be quite useful and im in no way dissing their authors work - but lets face it, they run record selling businesses and are hardly going to but bottom end price tags on stuff they're wanting to sell.
Pre-internet days word of mouth and sales lists might have been the only source of finding out who's paying what for records, but that's changed significantly with new technology.
Given the frequency and amount of soul record auctions and exposure that Ebay has globally, is that not a useful measure as to the current price of a record?
Tools exist within ebay to search completed auctions (probably a limit as to how far you can go back), and Popsike et al also have the functionality to search past auction results which helps in establishing the trend of price on a record, and perhaps what its currently selling for.
Is the voice of many (ebay auctions) a better way to establish price than the voice of a few select people (via guide prices)?
My point would be - when does ebay start/stop becoming useful in terms of establishing an accurate going rate for a record against other pricing sources?
I was reading the thread about paying over the odds for soul records and it got me trhinking of how prices are defined.
There's always lots of reference made to guide books and going rates, but i tend to find that whenever ebay results are mentioned, it's dismissed as being inconsistant and unreliable.
If records are sold regularly at a particular price/price range then is that not the 'going rate'? not what a book produced months/years ago suggests?
Don't get me wrong, i think the guide books can sometimes be quite useful and im in no way dissing their authors work - but lets face it, they run record selling businesses and are hardly going to but bottom end price tags on stuff they're wanting to sell.
Pre-internet days word of mouth and sales lists might have been the only source of finding out who's paying what for records, but that's changed significantly with new technology.
Given the frequency and amount of soul record auctions and exposure that Ebay has globally, is that not a useful measure as to the current price of a record?
Tools exist within ebay to search completed auctions (probably a limit as to how far you can go back), and Popsike et al also have the functionality to search past auction results which helps in establishing the trend of price on a record, and perhaps what its currently selling for.
Is the voice of many (ebay auctions) a better way to establish price than the voice of a few select people (via guide prices)?
My point would be - when does ebay start/stop becoming useful in terms of establishing an accurate going rate for a record against other pricing sources?
Azza