Frankie Crocker

I would not want to put anyone off Northern Soul. There is an enormous wealth of brilliant, excellent, good and fair sounds so for most of the time, you can’t go wrong. There are a few tailor made Levine tracks that come to mind and some pop-chart tunes we now tend to overlook, but the one I would nominate is the Enchantments-I’m In Love With Your Daughter on Faro. This has an odd beat, is hard to dance to and is atypical of the genre. PS I really like the Peanut Duck, especially the quack quack bits, nutty Detroit...

I’ve just been charged VAT based on postage costs and the price of a record. The dealer had difficulty switching to a US address so reluctantly I stumped up wasting $10 on the transaction. I think this is a real scam as postage charges relate to a service and not tangible goods.

Thanks for posting as always. Magic stuff. Another mixed bag but some pleasing results here and there for John. British items seem to growing in stature - I wish they could go in a Friday auction so I would not wear out my eyeballs looking over them.🤮

Really weird. A $200 record goes for ten times as much? I watched and put in one bid. The winner might be feeling pretty sick - maybe they will withdraw it? The underbidder might just have been shivving for a laugh. We know there’s a millionaire bidder out there who makes one bid only, and only on nice mint items - I suspect their usual bid is something like $3,000 or $5,000 which would guarantee winning pretty much everything. It could of course be another ‘dealer intercept’ who plans to press 300 copies at £20 a pop thereby making a tidy profit. I suppose anyone could put in a silly bid and spoil the auction by later withdrawing it. Some of the more prolific eBay buyers have dozens of withdrawn bids against by identity which hints at their MO.🤑🤫

Without overthinking it, your average collector is someone who buys for a number of reasons but generally tends to keep and curate their collection. I would estimate that most collectors do not DJ regularly but plenty have done so on occasions. Many collectors sell or trade records - often to make space in a box or fund purchase of a want; as records occur in varying conditions, many collectors will upgrade the flawed ones when the opportunity arises. Your serious collector will clean the records, re-sleeve them, maybe file or shelve them in some sort of order or system, possibly list or catalogue them, and when time permits, even play a few... Collecting is a diverse field so there may not actually be a ‘typical’ collector. Sometimes, there comes a point when you just pick up what comes your way and end up as a ‘gatherer’ - stuff just piles up and up in odd boxes so it becomes hard to maintain the collection.

Should fetch four figures. The few auctioned recently have been hotly contested. I reckon ‘I Got The Power’ on La Beat is a better record but it only sells for a fraction of the price.

The next three Wednesdays promise to be very interesting. John’s copy of Earl Jackson has almost reached 1K in 24 hours. John has also put up a Bobby Garrett on Mirwood when RareSoul45’s has one for set sale at £300 - this begs the question, do you grab Steve Jeffries before John’s goes for silly money or ignore them both as it’s a £200 record at the most?

Just bought the Astors - ‘Candy’ on Stax. A cheapie in mint condition. Really bought to test the new 20% scam - I switched addresses and hey presto, no levy.

I’m inclined to agree with you. The US auctions are not throwing up much at all just lately. The bigger sellers are falling back on poorer condition stock and maybe selling UK slow-sellers on commission. Record stores in the States are closed at present so the crate diggers are not uncovering stock. Some of the best records for sale recently have been offered on Soul Source. There are at least three sellers trickling out the best items in their collections, choice items being offered to fund the purchase of a major want, and loads of low end stuff being cleared out to make room for more.

The maladjusted market has already readjusted itself. One millionaire splashed out and the underbidder found a copy on eBay... The price is back to £350 if everybody stays calm. Tim’s auctions are a strange affair - the rarest of the rare fetch decent money but these are true rarities from Tim’s personal collection. You should monitor the bidding on Pat’s auction items and note where many of them end up. We already have one self-confessed millionaire buyer/collector/entrepreneur/ out there who can out-bid everybody. There are other folk in the music business who should be buying the rare records we are talking about if they have any sense and want to spend their millions on something enjoyable. A mate of mine is on the Sunday Times Rich List and he likes Northern...as it happens, he is not collecting at present. Not every expensive purchase is as daft as it may seem - the money’s out there but regrettably not in our hands.

Not a chance in a million. Some USA chancers with a beat up copy will try it on, but they will be laughed at. Unbelievable there’s a second person who would pay four figures for this record. I doubt anyone would pay £500 for it in the coming months unless he was a Premier League footballer

Well, someone’s having a Good, Good, Good, Good Feeling tonight... This is a £350 record, or it was until now. Gentlemen June usually fetches half on eBay - loads of this one around. Mr Big Shot (Set Sale spot) par for the course and recent reactivation plus demand have nudged this well beyond the £200 mark. Falcons was £30 about 25 years ago - great record and hard to grab but never worth £1,300-£1,400.

Definitely a topic worthy of discussion. I am not sure why eBay have introduced this surcharge. Neither am I sure why it is classed as a VAT charge. UK-USA transactions should not be affected by any post Brexit legislation surely? At a guess, I suspect it is the tax evasion antics of the FANGS that have prompted government to clamp down on the likes of eBay etc who shift their finances offshore to mask profit levels and tax potential. So, as I see it, this 20% is something eBay will keep and maybe, just maybe, give a bit to the government, but I would be doubtful about the whole procedure. The upshot of this charge will be to deter bidders, force bidders into factoring extra charges into calculations, a fall in US sales figures quoted on eBay, Popsike etc and a global shift in record buying. Some will boycott USA eBay sellers and switch buying preferences to UK sellers on eBay, Soul Source or privately when soul nights etc return. Looking further ahead, maybe collectors will fly more frequently to the States on buying trips, record conventions and private business.🤫

Great photo of Shirley here. The picture appears on the front of The Wigan Casino Story Goldmine CD (GSCD51). I am pictured in the crowd photographs inside the sleeve notes, a photo taken close to the time the Footsee picture sleeve image was captured.

A copy might just have sold in Pennsylvania for £800+. The Count has been putting it on eBay for months, discounting a little every now and then. I suspect he’s had an offer he could not refuse so its been removed from his sales list. Someone might have got a bargain as the record was in decent condition.

I’d have taken the Jeanette - still not got one but refuse to pay the going rate in the hope it will dip in value. Great record too. Hayes Cotton is a special case - decent sound but known more for its rarity. I would have tried to negotiate a trade. Rare records are worth more than money - you can trade records you don’t like for records you like.

Hi Steve. Sometimes, as a DJ, you might be expected to buy records that other people like, even when you not fond of them. It’s OK to sell records to raise the funds to buy more records - no shame there. But, as we’ve mentioned, dealers intercepting auction items to hike up sales prices and profits is dastardly from a frugal collector’s point of view.

Yes, the seller hiding his mates’ bids or his other eBay account details or just keeping his business ‘private’ wink, wink, nudge, nudge. ‘Private’ means avoid, steer clear, watch out, something fishy going on...

Fair question. But when you’re in a store in the USA, you sample the first few bars, if they sound Northern, they go in the ‘definite’ or ‘maybe’ piles...let the piles stack up, take the lot and count the cost later. Buying in bulk can be hazardous - in every 100, there will be one cracked, one off centre, a few you can’t get into and hopefully a few that will grow on you. In this case, the sound did not grow on me back in the UK but some of the initial regret has evaporated tonight. The worst regrets I have were when I didn’t buy a record when I could or should have.

Yes, rather surprising. My particular interest stems from having a copy, but I wondered if it was the same as the one quoted in the Manship Priceguide. I regretted splashing out $2-300 about 15 years ago but now I’m thinking I should try harder to like this record.🤩

The Private bidders have shivved the number up, but surely nobody put in a genuine bid. Hopefully someone will refer the case to eBay.

Magnetics currently at $787. All the bidders’ identities are hidden for a Private reason, probably because there is something to conceal🤬

Further research on Popsike and Soul-Source shows copies with identical labels and release numbers. From this, it looks like there's only the one version which prompts the question of what was the Manship Priceguide referring to?

Just wondering whether there are different variations of the release currently up for auction 6/1/21. I Need Your Love/Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right is listed in Manship’s Priceguide #7 at £300 and quotes the release number as ds1036. So, are there two versions of this release with different matrix details in the run-out, or is there just the one version? Any info out there would be appreciated.

Thanks Chalky. I was thinking along the lines of 70’s Emidiscs being cut on 7 inch acetates at 45 rpm so when 10 inch oddities appear, what was the cutting standard? The more I look at the acetates in question, the more baffled I am. The recent one also has significant edge damage like the previous two but they all look different suggesting someone has got hold of some old, damaged discs... Mike’s point above points to details that anyone would question.