Before OJCs go away

[HutchFan]

20 hours ago, BFrank said:

A friend of mine is helping someone sell off a large collection. He's starting with about 300 OJCs, many are in mint/near-mint condition, and quite a few are still sealed.

The sale will be live on YouTube next Saturday. I can post more info this week, if anyone's interested. There are no conditions for joining the feed.

BFrank -- How does a sale on YouTube work???

 

[Ken Dryden]

BFrank:

I'm wondering the same thing. I took advantage of my writer's discount with Fantasy before Concord Jazz bought it and gutted their catalog, routinely spending several hundred dollars per order and getting a lot of what I wanted, though I missed a few things, too.

[BFrank]

He goes by "Mazzy" and is on YouTube at: @mazzysmusic. He's very prolific at posting videos that mostly lean towards vinyl collecting, but he'll talk about all sorts of music-related topics.

The sale will be at 12noon, Pacific Time. I think it will be a mix of live auction (where you would bid through the chat channel) and fixed price album sales. He's done a few of them before. The biggest was after a friend of ours with a very large collection passed away and sold quite a few pieces.

I'll try to remember to give an update at the end of the week if anything changes.

[BFrank]

Here’s a preview he posted on Instagram today

https://www.instagram.com/p/CnxJ2DDvQfO/?igshid=YWJhMjlhZTc=

[BFrank]

OJC Sale tomorrow, 12pm Pacific time

 

[Brad]

I will check this out. 

[JSngry]

Is that Bret Primack? 

[Brad]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Is that Bret Primack? 

No, it’s not. 

[Teasing the Korean]

On the very rare occasion that I waddle into a rekkid store, I always find very cheap OJCs, and not always the obvious stuff.

[Brad]

Weird fucking process. 

[colinmce]

3 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

On the very rare occasion that I waddle into a rekkid store, I always find very cheap OJCs, and not always the obvious stuff.

I still buy several a year this way, but I am finding people are becoming ever more precious about the Limited Edition ones. Somehow even Blue Note RVG CDs are starting to get very pricy in some cases. Highly ironic and absurd as they're less in demand than ever. Algorithms and Discogs have convinced everyone they have a big payday just around the corner. 

[felser]

7 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

On the very rare occasion that I waddle into a rekkid store

Do those still exist?  At one point King of Prussia Plaza had 400+ stores, none that sold music or books.  They now have a "boutique" type of rekkid store, where you can get all 32 flavors of Taylor Swift album covers, but nothing like an OJC or BN CD.

[Teasing the Korean]

6 minutes ago, felser said:

Do those still exist?  At one point King of Prussia Plaza had 400+ stores, none that sold music or books.  They now have a "boutique" type of rekkid store, where you can get all 32 flavors of Taylor Swift album covers, but nothing like an OJC or BN CD.

In some places, yes.  I was in another city a few months ago.  I walked into a record store and went straight to the jazz CDs. The proprietor was holding court with another employee and some customers.  He was discussing a Zoom meeting he hosted about music.  At one point, he said, a participant asked what shoegaze was.  This elicited a roar of laughter from his entourage. "Dude," he said, "I could spend this whole call talking about shoe gaze."  More guffaws.  A short while later, I went up to the counter with a bunch of OJC  and Connoisseur CDs, all for $2.99 a throw.  The guy rang me up without saying a word.  I walked out of there like I hit a jackpot.

[Late]

8 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

... I always find very cheap OJCs, and not always the obvious stuff.

The only place (brick and mortar) that I've found cheap OJCs (sometimes still sealed) is Amoeba in San Francisco. Found two Oliver Nelsons, one Jimmy Forrest, and one Lockjaw there last year. Each title (sealed) was $4.99. Weird. The prices on Discogs are sometimes 5-6 times that much. eBay is even higher.

Even though I'm familiar with the albums, I don't have physical copies of Quinichette's On The Sunny Side or For Basie. I wish I would've found those at Amoeba! Also am still on the lookout for Houston Person's Blue Odyssey. Oh, and Curtis Counce's Landslide. 😲

[colinmce]

15 hours ago, Late said:

The only place (brick and mortar) that I've found cheap OJCs (sometimes still sealed) is Amoeba in San Francisco. Found two Oliver Nelsons, one Jimmy Forrest, and one Lockjaw there last year. Each title (sealed) was $4.99. Weird. The prices on Discogs are sometimes 5-6 times that much. eBay is even higher.

Even though I'm familiar with the albums, I don't have physical copies of Quinichette's On The Sunny Side or For Basie. I wish I would've found those at Amoeba! Also am still on the lookout for Houston Person's Blue Odyssey. Oh, and Curtis Counce's Landslide. 😲

I had the fortune of visiting Amoeba in both LA and San Francisco over the last year. In each case I walked out with a massive pile of jazz CDs, nearly all between $2-8, many of them things I've been searching for high & low for years. If I lived there I'd run out of space in my house within months. 

[Late]

18 hours ago, colinmce said:

I had the fortune of visiting Amoeba in both LA and San Francisco over the last year. In each case I walked out with a massive pile of jazz CDs, nearly all between $2-8, many of them things I've been searching for high & low for years. If I lived there I'd run out of space in my house within months. 

👍

The San Francisco Amoeba is a great store. I'd probably make weekly trips (or even more frequent?) if I lived in the area. The L.A. store, since it downsized, is still excellent, but the jazz section doesn't seem quite as expansive as it used to be. Nevertheless, in 2023, it's a rarity and a privilege to have such fine brick and mortars. The buyers know their music, and still give relatively decent prices when you bring in used discs for trade/sale. (Except for classical. I actually had a buyer apologize to me when I brought in a box of used classical discs for trade.)

Oh—and a tip I learned over the years. Always go straight to the "Newly Added" section (which is before "A" in the bins). It's not alphabetized, but that's where you can sometimes find gems before they're inventoried.

[romualdo]

I dropped in to Amoeba in SF (Haight) back in 2017 on our US trip

Never seen such a big record/CD store - picked up a handful of CDs but the cherry on top was the Shorty Rogers "Modern Sounds" Capitol box set (3 x 7" 45s) in beautiful condition  - $7.99!! IMHO a bargain just for the cover alone

[Mark Stryker]

On 1/28/2023 at 8:27 PM, felser said:

Do those still exist?  At one point King of Prussia Plaza had 400+ stores, none that sold music or books.  They now have a "boutique" type of rekkid store, where you can get all 32 flavors of Taylor Swift album covers, but nothing like an OJC or BN CD.

In metro Detroit, where I live, I count 14 record stores off the top of my head of various sizes, stock, and focus. 

[Big Beat Steve]

On 1/29/2023 at 3:38 AM, Late said:

Even though I'm familiar with the albums, I don't have physical copies of Quinichette's On The Sunny Side or For Basie. I wish I would've found those at Amoeba!

Too bad shipping across the pond has become totally uneconomical these days. A while ago I picked a very, very clean spare copy of the "Basie Reunion" twofer (Prestige P-24019) that includes "For Basie" along with the contents of the "Basie Reunion" LP at a ridiculously low price. A price at which I did not hesitate putting a copy on my rack of spare items of records I particularly like.
I am glad I picked up a copy of "On The Sunny Side" (secondhand, of course) when the occasion arose. It's a cover you remember and I do not remember having seen it often in more recent years.
OJC CDs do come up in the secondhand bins at the #1 remaining local record store here from time to time - incalculable as to what you can get your hands on, but sometimes with unexpected surprises. My most recent purchases were "Please Mr Jackson" by Willis Jackson and "Soul Street" by Jimmy Forrest - at the outrageous sum of 1 EUR each! But no, these prices ARE fairly rare occurrences.

 

Edited January 30, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[T.D.]

There are some decent record stores scattered around the Mid-Hudson Valley, NY. Big recent growth has been in vinyl, afaict.

For instance, I've found reasonably priced OJC CDs every time I've looked in Kingston, NY the past few years. Never left the shop empty-handed, visit about 3 times per year.

[mikeweil]

This one I just bought from a Dutch discogs seller:

[Late]

15 hours ago, mikeweil said:

This one I just bought from a Dutch discogs seller:

👍

Mr. Butterfield always carried an orange in his tuba case. Terry planted the photo of himself.

[Late]

Attached is a Word document (.docx) with a list of all (I think) the Limited Edition OJCs. Corrections welcome.

Limited Edition OJCs.docx

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I always wondered how OJC decided which CD release would get called limited. The only real difference was the price. Those limited edition releases were about $3 more. But they were never limited. They were in print for as long as they made OJC CDs.

[Dan Gould]

41 minutes ago, bresna said:

I always wondered how OJC decided which CD release would get called limited. The only real difference was the price. Those limited edition releases were about $3 more. But they were never limited. They were in print for as long as they made OJC CDs.

I think the Limited was predicated on how many they thought they would sell, and therefore charging a higher price for fewer units of anticipated volume. Those Coltrane and Miles discs were going to sell for all eternity.  I think I recall a Bennie Green that was in the "Limited" line and I can understand that it sold fewer.

Also there's just a plain old element of marketing there. If we say it's Limited maybe you'll shell out the extra bucks.