FA: The entire collection of Verve Elite CDs

[Face of the Bass]

Somebody wanted the Wynton Kelly disc just a little bit more than I did.

[Big Al]

Drat! Drat! DRAT! Completely forgot today was the end of the auctions! Probably just as well. Sure hope whoever won that Blakey enjoys it, as my search for it continues, as does the kicking of myself for not buying it when Barnes & Noble had it all those years ago.

[sidewinder]

Yes Big Al, those were the days when even the most lowly Borders and Barnes & Nobles had a nice set of Verve Elites, Blue Note Conns and West Coast Classics. A golden age, for sure !

[king ubu]

Missed how this ended... what happened with the Stitt?

I got one with a damaged booklet (the front page cut off, instead the beginning of the liners are glued in on a b/w photocopied piece of paper - good enough for me, but hey...)

[vibes]

Missed how this ended... what happened with the Stitt?

I got one with a damaged booklet (the front page cut off, instead the beginning of the liners are glued in on a b/w photocopied piece of paper - good enough for me, but hey...)

The Stitt went for $21.28. Not huge, but not terrible, either. Might be slightly above what I originally paid for it.

Yes Big Al, those were the days when even the most lowly Borders and Barnes & Nobles had a nice set of Verve Elites, Blue Note Conns and West Coast Classics. A golden age, for sure !

Even I missed that golden age. By the time I became aware of and interested in VEEs, they must have been long gone from retail. I had to buy them all online, through auctions, etc. It took me forever to find them all.

[sidewinder]

Even I missed that golden age. By the time I became aware of and interested in VEEs, they must have been long gone from retail. I had to buy them all online, through auctions, etc. It took me forever to find them all.

That 'Golden Age' was yet another thing that went up in smoke around the time of 9/11, Vibes.

[king ubu]

I still remember finding the Quinichette VEE (also the RVG of "A Fickle Sonance" and two or three other goodies) while on vacation in Poland in October... 2000 - it was the weeks in which Milosevic fell, to be replaced by douchebag-salon-nationalist Kostunica.

The Dinah W. and Lalo S. I bought from a board member for quite hefty prices, but those were the days. I was in London in spring 2001 (I think) and one of the big stores (HMV?) had lots of VEEs, but they cost around 20£ and the £ was worth quite something back then! I preferred buying tons of books, instead - but I did get a few goodies (I think I got "Cosmic Music" then, not sure though).

[sidewinder]

The Dinah W. and Lalo S. I bought from a board member for quite hefty prices, but those were the days. I was in London in spring 2001 (I think) and one of the big stores (HMV?) had lots of VEEs, but they cost around 20£ and the £ was worth quite something back then!

That would either be Tower or HMV. Yes, they were around the £20 mark (at a time that they were about $15-16 in the US )

[king ubu]

I don't even remember where that store was... very central for sure, jazz wasn't on ground floor but somewhere further up... the most amazing thing for me was that they had 4-10 copies of each disc, even of such rarer things as VEEs! I'd never seen that before (nor have I since... except for some stores specialising on having some numbers of ECMs or whatever in stock and displayed in a speceial place).

[sidewinder]

Sounds like the old Tower, Picadilly Circus (the Jazz section was 1 floor up, over the 'transparent walkway'). RIP

Edited February 5, 2012 by sidewinder

[king ubu]

Yeah, that's it - Picadilly Circus it was!

They had quite a stunning selection back then!