23

IN WHICH… I DECIDE FAIRS ARE FAIR

Record fairs take place all over the country. I’ve always had mixed feelings about them. You’d imagine you are unlikely to find any great bargains at a record fair. The people who have records they believe are worth selling will almost certainly have done their homework to ensure they know precisely what those records are worth. Why would you go to a fair prepared to let people take advantage of your lack of knowledge?

On the other hand, if you can be bothered to go to a record fair to make money you must understand that you can only do that by persuading people to buy your wares. To do so, you need to have items attractive to potential purchasers. You probably will not be taking your personal favourites to be sold, so you won’t have an excessive musical loyalty to your stock which will just be there to make you money. You also need to be able to recognise the point at which a price becomes a deterrent, and the point at which you’ve pitched it too low and your hand is likely to be wrenched from its wrist in the rush to buy. The ‘sweet spot’ between these extremes is where the seller must be prepared to deal, and as a buyer you need to recognise the advantage a fair offers, of probably a large number of desirable items in the same place at the same time, which is not usually a feature of an individual record shop.

Fairs will feature multiple dealers. They will be checking out each other’s stock to ensure they don’t miss an opportunity to acquire stuff they themselves would like to own. They may have the same records as other dealers but be desperate to sell, so be prepared to bargain. With so many dealers present, there is bound to be one or more offering examples of the genres which appeal to you. Not everyone can know everything about every different style of music. Maybe you will be able to delve through the goods on offer and find something worthwhile. You’ll almost certainly come away with a story or two about what happened while you were there. Something you saw which amused you, or which you heard that didn’t seem to make sense. Even if you don’t buy anything, your day will be improved by looking at and hearing old records, likewise old collectors and vendors.

Vendors like the two I heard chatting to each other at the fair in Bushey, Hertfordshire.

‘I usually do well at Canterbury. There’s always a good turnout there.’

‘Canterbury? Where is that – in London?’

‘No, it’s not in London, it’s in Kent.’

‘Oh yeah, I know it well.’

I’m smiling inside but splash out £3 on a Buddy Guy CD from the chap who knows Canterbury well enough not to know where it is.

Then I spot someone selling ‘Prog/Psych CDs’ and quickly pull out nine of them which I don’t have, but would like and which would total £48 at the marked prices.

‘Would you do these for £40?’

The stallholder looks doubtful. He mentally tots up the total price, looks unsure, then agrees to £40. I hand over four tenners, saying:

‘I printed these off this morning.’

‘That’s OK. You do know you’ve given me six of them, don’t you?’

We part on friendly terms.

Bargaining can be the difficult part of buying. But always bargain.

I have got myself on to the online mailing lists of a number of record shops, and they often send me a rundown of their latest wares. Occasionally they are trumpeting a ‘sale’ – which usually is shorthand for ‘We haven’t been able to shift these items at the outrageously over-the-top prices we’ve tried to con people into paying, so we’ve finally decided to pitch them at a more realistic level’. One list came in for a mint six-LP set of all the albums recorded by The Turtles, a group I particularly like. It claimed to be at ‘half price’ and it was, indeed, half the price they had previously asked. I watched, but like a patient angler, didn’t immediately strike for fear of losing both bait and fish. Regular reruns of the sale items were sent, with the six-set still there each time. When it came in again on ‘Black Friday’, price unchanged, I checked whether anyone else might be selling it at a better price. I couldn’t find one. The main drawback was the post and packing price, so I emailed the retailer, asking whether they’d waive that if I bought the set. They did. I bought it, although I felt I could probably have pushed a little harder to save a little more. My happiness was not quite so obvious when, even before my package arrived, the shop ran another promotion – offering no post & packing charges…

Back at the fair, I spot a man with a ‘Beatles Box’ priced at ‘£30 or an offer’. The box turns out to contain eight cassette tapes. I’m not sure how desirable they are these days. A quick search on my mobile reveals the same set online for a cheapest £43. Hm. ‘An offer’ – should I suggest £25 to the vendor, now talking to a neighbouring seller?

He’s telling him, ‘No one has even looked at these cassettes. No worry, though, I’ll sell ’em online if no one’s interested.’

The other guy says that he has seen a man whom he recognises as being a rival record fair organiser ‘wandering around looking for vinyl’.

‘What’s he look like?’

‘Tall and quiet.’

‘Yeah, I know him – he looked at some of my stuff once, I had a load of Beatles’ White Albums. Have you heard of them?’

‘Yes, everyone has. The lower the number on them, the more valuable they are…’

‘You see, the lower the number on them, the more valuable they are, and I had some low numbers, so I told him, “make me an offer”.’

‘And did he?’

‘Yes. He said “30 quid”.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Told him to add a nought.’

‘Did he buy any?’

‘No.’

‘Did anyone else?’

‘No, but I’ll sell ’em online, I’m not going to give ’em away.’

I decided not to make him an offer for the Beatle cassettes. I figured he’d only suggest 300 quid…

‘Excuse me, but is that Elvis Presley or Sophia Loren?’

An unexpected question, but it was being asked of one of the 20 or so record dealers pushing his wares inside Guildford’s historic Guildhall, under its splendid 1683 clock, at the May 2018 record fair there. It was being asked by the male half of a relatively youthful mixed couple trawling the records, whose female half had just emerged from her delvings, with a Francoise Hardy LP and was flourishing it triumphantly.

‘I’ve been looking for one of these for ages…’

The record dealer was torn between taking the money for the Francoise Hardy record and wondering precisely what the Elvis/Sophia query was all about.

‘That album cover up there. I was wondering whether it was Elvis or Sophia on the cover.’

‘No idea, it isn’t mine… ’

The couple wandered off, at the point I emerged from deep study of a box of CDs, clutching a Traffic live, an Arzachel and a Grail – the latter produced by Rod Stewart, no less. All three of them were new issues. It was likely to set me back three figures if I waited for vinyl versions of the latter two, even though the Traffic LP, described by one reviewer as ‘variable quality Grey Market CD’, can be had for 15 quid. The cheapest original vinyl Arzachel I could find on Discogs was £131.87 + pp from Spain, described as being in ‘good’ condition for the disc itself with a ‘very good’ sleeve, although the buyer bizarrely added: ‘BETTER THAN DESCRIPTION!!!!’ The 1969 Evolution label version of this record gets a £1000 rating in RRPG. Reissue vinyl copies can be had for £30. The Grail album, not even mentioned in RRPG, is going to cost you online at least £25 for a reissue version, and over £300 for an ‘original’. So my outlay of £20 for all three CDs seemed a decent investment.

I’d now spotted a Francoise Hardy CD, so when I saw the Francoise Hardy album lady again at a nearby stall I decided to ask her whether she might have overlooked it. Except that it wasn’t her after all, and the person it was looked at me as though I was some kind of lunatic-cum-stalker, stammered, ‘I’ve no idea who Francoise Hardy is’ and moved rapidly away.

I’d come to Guildford with a friend, Mike H, who had just put me to shame by producing a comprehensive list on paper of all the records he owns, designed to cut down those annoying double, or treble, purchases. We’d noticed the word ‘collectors’ was a topical one in Guildford. The record fairs, which attract hundreds of browsers, are organised by Ben Darnton, whose own local record shop in Tunsgate is called Ben’s Collectors Records (no apostrophe), about which a regular noted accurately: ‘moving around will be a little tricky unless you are super slim’. This shop is not to be confused with the Collectors Record Centre (no apostrophe) which is a couple of roads away at 89 Woodbridge Road. This is where Ben started to work in 1984, and where he clearly twigged that some form of the words ‘Collector/s’ and/or ‘Record/s’ might work when he came to run a shop of his own. It remains unclear whether Ben’s shop ever had any relationship whatsoever with a shop not far away in Old London Road, Kingston upon Thames, called Collectors Record Shop (no apostrophe). I have been to that one and must say it had a more laid-back feel than Ben’s emporium. But in late 2018 it morphed into Shaks’ Stax of Wax.

I’d have liked to meet Ben in person, but when we ventured into his shop – as welcoming, atmospheric and reasonably priced as we’d been given to understand it would be – we were surprised to learn that Ben had left town for a few days. His shop is almost literally stacked to the eaves with records and CDs. There is a basic logic to the way in which the records are shelved and positioned, but you are still likely to find yourself kneeling on the floor to get to the boxes containing ‘folk and country’. I had asked the guys in charge whether they had any folk, which resulted in a conversation between the two of them. Both, for some reason, were sporting leather satchels of the type used back in the day by your friendly local milkman or bus conductor, although I did not observe either actually putting any cash into them:

‘Do we have a Folk section?’

‘Pretty sure we used to have.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘No idea.’

All of which suggested that there isn’t a great demand for Folk music in Guildford – but Mike H, who specialises in this genre, did find a few records to buy. I contented myself with a Todd Rundgren and a Freakbeat compilation CD, all the time enjoying the very relaxed vibe, and also trying to spot more than the odd square inch of unused space – even the ceiling is covered in record-related publications.

When we first arrived at Guildford Station, Mike H and I made for the Collectors Record Centre (no apostrophe) sporting a sign in the window, ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’, displayed under a plastic skull and crossbones. Neither of us found anything to buy here but we did enjoy overhearing a snippet of conversation between owner and customer:

‘Who’s the least collectable artist on the planet?’

‘Probably Black Lace.’

Having pointed out apostrophic oddities, I now enjoy a spell of complaining …