unknown pleasures

What really has me excited is Iced Tea Season…

I’d hardly call people selling 20+ year old indie albums scalpers. I mean, it’s not like they’re flipping the UO variant of something and listing on eBay while they’re still in preorder. These things are long out of print, highly regarded classics. That’s basically any good used record store’s bread and butter.

…what the hell? I would think that’s pretty obvious?!

Yes, if only one do Waterloo. End Of An Ear is a close second but not as large or centrally located.

Ok, which one of you guys got it? https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sells-unique-wu-tang-clan-album-owned-by-martin-shkreli-11627411669

How could you argue with the creative mind behind such album cover masterpieces as this?

Always a shame when these new kids on the block like Rough Trade (Est. 1976) start jumping on the vinyl bandwagon and screw stuff up so royally. Leave it to the professionals, guys…

In my experience I think this actually works the other way because the lower priced copies (missing covers, water damaged, otherwise unplayable) set a “floor” people look at and also drop the average. I guess it goes both ways, though; probably for rarer releases the price is inflated by the “low/average/high” history and for more common releases it hurts prices.

Yup, this is all part of the forbidden dance know as The Mystery of the Hobby.

It gets worse and worse…

It seems like the $39 version is signed, ships with a QR code for some exclusive digital content, and also - unlike the people that bought the $27.99 version - you never asked for it specifically, they just sent it to you.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. If that’s the case then I can understand the complaints a little more - it sounds like it’s basically an overrun of an existing variant that they just got signed, and then you get some digital content. Not nearly as “special” as they were pushing…

I don't know, to me it always sounded like exclusive variants but admittedly an exclusive color and not just special packaging. But still, the emphasis in the beginning was the packaging (the wheel, whatever that is, the special printing, etc) and the interactive/social stuff so it doesn't seem like it's too far from what I was understanding. You're still getting a limited color in a sleeve that no one else offers with a load of bonus content for what, like $10 more than the standard release? Doesn't sound like that bad a deal to me but again, without seeing a regular version in one hand and this Super Special Rough Trade version in the other it's hard to compare.

The vagueness around what the actual problem is makes it really difficult for me to sympathize with the members, they're making a big deal out of a one-word edit to the site which at the heart of it doesn't change the language too much in my opinion:

Thanks! That’s what I guessed, I was just a little confused because I thought I’d seen international sales in the past charged a tax, but maybe it was outside of UK/EU. The Beatles sure had it right when they wrote Taxman!

True. Two years ago when they sent out the initial email about taxes, I not only read the whole thing but started this thread on the subject. The amount of f’s I give about anything since COVID has decreased dramatically…

So I got some Discogs email today about UK/EU taxes but can’t be bothered to read the whole thing. If I’m in the US, is it anything I should be aware about?

I liked the NO trailer. They should have just left it at that.

I estimate it takes 10 seconds to sign a copy, so working 8 hour days would take around a week to get 13,000 albums signed if you take an hour lunch. I’m confident each and every one of those 13,000 will be legibly autographed. Yes sir, totally confident.

I'm too busy waiting for the "Walmart Vinylmania" edition of Deceiver.

You know any preorder that makes you check a box to acknowledge delays is going to make for great future reading.

There’s a couple of things I passed on this morning from UK shops because of postage that I ended paying the same or more for from US sellers. You’d think by now I’d learn my lesson and just buy the things I want when I first see them…