What's the most you'd pay for a CD/Album?

[Hardbopjazz]

I ask this only because I want to justify spending 75 USD for a OOP CD. One of my favorite musician is on the CD. I found it for sale on eBay.

[Brad]

I think I paid $100 for Straight No Filter, before it was re-issued of course. Of course, no way I'd spend that kind of money again.

[GA Russell]

HBJ, I bought my first stereo album in 1965. At that time, most stores sold stereo albums for $3.99.

At that time, gold was $40 an ounce. So a stereo album was worth 1/10 of an ounce of gold.

Today gold goes for about $1200. So 1/10 of an ounce of gold is $120 in 2015 dollars.

I think you've got a lot of room there!

[Chuck Nessa]

Just wait. You don't "NEED" any recording.

[Leeway]

If that is generally the market price (do your due diligence), and you can afford it easily (not going to miss the mortgage or rent), then buy it. I look at the "kick" factor. How much and how long will you kick yourself if you DON'T get it? I find that eventually one forgets the price in the enjoyment of the item, whereas one often spends a lot of time thinking fruitlessly about "the one that got away." If you can't afford to buy it now, then wait for a bargain copy to surface.

[Eric]

For. a CD, maybe $25. It is ok to not own everything.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Eric

[colinmce]

For a single CD, $35 is about tops, but that's only for the very few at the tip-top of my list. I could go up to about $35-40 for a double or triple with the same caveat. I don't really buy many box sets, and never ones over $60 or so, so I can't say about that. Same with vinyl, almost never buy it and never drop much when I do.

I think the most I ever spent on a single disc is about $25 for Joe McPhee's As Serious As Your Life. I paid $45 for Braxton/Santa Cruz. I also spent $66 on the two volumes of Ran Blake's Painted Rhythms. Generally, though, I'm a deals man and try to get CDs in the $3-15 range. You'd be surprised how things fall in your lap if you wait, like with the two Tony Oxley CBS CDs I pined after for years: I got both for $10/free shipping.

[peterintoronto]

I think I spent thirty or forty dollars (each) on two of those Knit Classics/Survival Rashied Ali reissues. Money well spent.

Edited January 4, 2015 by peterintoronto

[JSngry]

I If you can't afford to buy it now, then wait for a bargain copy to surface.

Or just wait until you have a better job.

[Jazzmoose]

I think the most I've spent is around $25; I must have wanted it bad. On the other hand, I remember paying over $300 for a comic book, so don't look to me for financial sanity.

[David Ayers]

if you really *have* to *own* CDs isn't it just better to wait for things to come around, as folks here are saying? Personally I'd look at that $75 as money to go and catch a live performance.

Of course you don't want to say what CD it is but sometimes another person can easily locate something if their search methods and/or favoured websites are different from your own....

[A Lark Ascending]

I don't think I've ever paid more than about £20 for a single CD (and very rarely at that). Spending on CDs peaked in the mid-noughties when £15 was the norm for full price.

As a downloader now £7.99 is the usual maximum though things are often much cheaper. My e-music account has a legacy package that for some reason gives me each track at 21p instead of the usual 42p. So a 12 track album comes out at around £2.50. Which is mad! Encourages hoarding...but also experimentation and chance taking.

[Dan Gould]

I recently paid $40 for a used CD, but I justified it this way - Just before I got $50 in Visa gift cards thru a promotion from one of our vendors, so in my mind, by applying the gift cards to gas and food and nothing else, the CD didn't cost me anything.

I probably would have bought it either way, but it did make it easier to click "buy it now".

Edited January 4, 2015 by Dan Gould

[David Ayers]

I guess my other thought on this is that jazz musicians tend to repeat themselves a lot and there's a law of diminishing returns which can kick in pretty quickly.

[paul secor]

Just wait. You don't "NEED" any recording.

Well said.

[Hardbopjazz]

^{Oddly enough, the price just dropped to $54.99. Maybe I'll wait some more.}

^{http://www.ebay.com/itm/Shunzo-Ohno-Maya-Steve-Willson-Japan-TBM-CD-OOP-/111178057409?pt=Music_CDs&hash=item19e2ba86c1}

[Brad]

Couldn't agree more with Chuck. In addition, my theory vis a vis eBay is that everything shows up again.

[Tom 1960]

I think I may have spent up to $30 once for a single disc. Justifying that I had come across so many great deals on the net for very little cost. I have a pretty extensive wish list of recordings on Amazon. A decent amount of those what I would consider outside my price range. If one is patient, price reductions can happen. No need to break the bank.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Tom 1960

[ejp626]

$30 is the most I can remember* spending on a few ultra-rare (at the time) BN imports -- most likely Andrew Hill and Bobby Hutcherson. Of course these were later reissued, but that only applies for BN. Other stuff disappears forever, so you just never know.

* If I did spend more than $30, I must be blocking it out...

[Homefromtheforest]

The most money I spent on a CD was $50 for the original jewel case Japanese CD version of "distant voices" by Steve Lacy with Yuji Takahashi and Takehisa Kosugi. A few years later it was reissued on a Japanese mini-LP sleeve so I bought that reissue for $17 and sold my earlier version for around $50!

As far as LPs...well I'm sad to say I've spent up to $500 *but* I've also sold a lot of albums for big profits which I use to justify my more expensive purchases!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The most I've ever spent on an LP was 40 GBP ($61 and a bit), which was on Sam Lazar's 'Space flight', in 1991, and well worth the money. Over here, Argo/Cadet albums hardly ever surfaced and I'd just been promoted, so I felt like I could and should. It was only 10 years later I got my wife to spring for a Japanese CD of the album for Christmas, which had recently come out.

In general I agree, pretty well everything comes around on the internet nowadays. But keeping an eye on Ebay for hundreds of different albums one wants is a total pain in the arse. It may well be worth paying a bit through the nose for something you want simply to avoid that chore.

You pays your money and you takes your choice. Or you don't, and take that choice.

MG

[JSngry]

"How much is too much"?, that' silly if asked in a vacuum.

• Am I buying this from my disposable income, assuming that I have any?
• For how long will I feel the impact of this purchase?
• What might/will I not be able to do while waiting to replenish the funds spent on this one item?
• Is the price of the item in line with the motivation for getting it? i.e. - is the is last missing piece of a collection, is this some best-ever performance, or is this just a curio that you happen to run across?

Really, now, shit cost what shit cost. Whatever the price is when you find something that you want, that's what it costs. Haggle if possible, but if you want it, be ready to pay for it.

$55? That's like one order some days, half of one order if it's getting frisky. It can be, like one order for 8-9 items at Berkshire, or it can be this one item here. Money's the same, right? So don't get distracted by the "I've never paid this much..." thing, because the odds are that you have paid that much at one time,just not for one item. But you gonna look at dollars, look at dollars.

Here's the big picture - yes, everything comes back around. But the rarer stuff comes back around with far less frequency. The common shit always gonna be there, that's why it's common.

And remember - all of the above is based on "want" vs "need". You should only play this game if you can truly appreciate the difference, because otherwise you will end up punked by life.

[gmonahan]

$35 or so. I think it was for a Sinatra bootleg. I'm a hopeless Sinatra completist. I gave up thoughts of treatment for the disease years ago.

gregmo

[Clunky]

I don't think I've ever paid more than £20 for a CD. I've rarely paid anywhere near that amount with around fifteen being a more usual high water mark. LPs are another matter with £100 being my max. and that only twice. I must have less than a dozen LPs which cost more than £50.

[mjazzg]

Haven't paid more than £20 for a CD. LPs are different. One very much wanted and rare item came in at a shade under £150. Next most expensive has been under £50, more commonly £20 or so.