61

IN WHICH… I FEAR RECORD SHOP RAGE

Collectors Paradise (no apostrophe) in Chesham is an odd place. Very odd. There are hundreds – thousands, probably – of LPs and CDs, but a considerable cornucopia of other stuff for sale: ‘Toys, including Corgi, Dinky & Matchbox; Pokemon cards; Model Railway Trains; Old Silver; Collectible China.’ Then there’s the boss. ‘I’ve got a lot of vinyl, haven’t I?’ said Dale, the owner, rhetorically I thought, as I entered his shop for the first time. Clearly he was not expecting a negative answer. In order to avoid an argument or discussion I just replied, ‘Yes, but so have I’, which this, to me, somewhat Dickensian-looking character pretended not to hear.

The volume of vinyl might not be in question on this Monday in August 2017, but, as he had some good titles in bad covers and worse condition, the quality most certainly was. Despite a lack of plastic protection and a plethora of scratches on surfaces, most of the records were priced as though they were in mint condition. Time and again I picked out an excellent, desirable title, but soon shoved it back, scared off by price and/or condition.

Eventually I’d been through a couple of hundred records without finding anything demanding to be bought except a copy of a 1968 Beacon Street Union LP, The Clown Died in Marvin Gardens, a US psych scarcity, probably valued in the high double figure region (their other album gets a £100 rating in the latest RRPG) for a well-preserved copy, and which I did not recall ever seeing in the flesh before. Here, it was dressed in what seemed to be a home-made, or home-adapted cover. For once that morning, I found that the surface of the album appeared acceptable, though. I had only rarely seen this around in vinyl and despite owning it on CD, I was prepared to pay the £20 asked to buy this unique copy.

Now I turned to his CD shelves with more success. Again, a wide selection of decent titles, invariably, though, in rather better nick than the vinyl. I bought three £7 titles – including one by Trees – in order to take advantage of his ‘fiver off if you spend £20’ offer. I think, though, he’d have been better off pricing everything at a fiver in the first place and offering no reductions. Because had he done so I reckon I’d have bought four rather than three and he’d have been £4 better off.

As I paid for my purchases, I looked a little more closely at Dale, about my age, who seemed to be obsessed with telling his rather younger, bored-looking female assistant absolutely every single thing he’d done at the weekend. She eventually stood up and told him she had to nip out ‘for five or ten minutes to the bank. They’ve closed my account, you know. It just disappeared online.’ ‘Have you,’ he asked her, ‘paid off that 50 quid overdraft?’ ‘Well, no, but it’s outrageous.’

A unique combination of vinyl and boxing memorabilia is the unique selling point of Heroes, which, some months later, decided to open next door to Collectors Paradise. When I first walked into the shop, it was to see a 50-something chap seated behind the counter. We exchanged ‘good morning’ greetings with each other. The shop was otherwise empty, a little chilly, over-crowded stock-wise and it had a sterile feel to it. Records were competing with the boxing memorabilia for floor-, wall- and shelf-space.

Imagine my surprise, when the in-house sound system almost immediately selected some kind of DJ-style, trance-style floor-filler for an age-group far younger than mine, likely to appreciate such a ‘banging’ (assuming this is an appropriate term to use) tune. The volume was of heavy metal velocity, and my browsing of a Lesley Duncan LP, of a far more gentle disposition, was genuinely curtailed by being compelled to listen to it. I tried looking towards the counter to see whether I could indicate that I wasn’t enjoying the music. But I failed to make eye contact. So I tried huffing and puffing. No reaction. Finally, I threw my hands up in the air, enunciated carefully, and audibly: ‘F’fucksake’, before flouncing out. Much though I felt I’d enjoy Ms Duncan’s album, which was fairly priced at a fiver, I wasn’t now going to give him the satisfaction of receiving any of my moolah.

Instead, I walked straight into Collectors Paradise where an elderly gent was regaling Dale with tales of his army days in Libya, and even competing with the Pat Benatar album being belted out by singing some old army song, to generous but gentle applause from boss and customers. Having noted Dale’s somewhat garrulous, eccentric manner before, I wasn’t surprised at this, but as I delved into the vinyl, I confirmed that the prices on offer were again too rich for my constitution.

I made a beeline for the CD shelves packed with reasonably priced fare, and a pretty wide range of genres. Some sealed Led Zeps, including bonus tracks from Jimmy Page’s remasterings were only seven quid each, but I passed them over, remembering how infrequently I feel the mood come on to play their records these days. Instead I wheedled out a Joanne Shaw Taylor at £6, a Meic Stephens at £4, Skid Row (the original Gary Moore version) for just a fiver, and an unusual psych-prog Mixed Up Minds compilation at £6 – a total of £16, after Dale’s discount was taken off.

Dale was complimentary about my choices and told me about an Eastern European female blues singer called, I think, Popovich, when he spotted the Shaw Taylor. He also laughed that he’d had to tell a couple of other would-be buyers that the Skid Row CD was not by the US hard rock band of the same name. I paid his young female assistant.

Leather-Jacket had now been joined by another record hunter. The two obviously knew each other and Dale told Leather-Jacket: ‘Look at this watch, it’s antique, I researched it and priced it at 200 quid, but the only offer I’ve had was from a chap who offered half that. I came down to £140 but he hasn’t budged.’

‘Is he your only watch-buying customer?’

‘At the moment.’

‘Well, he’s clearly interested, and if he won’t pay more you’re going to have to accept the only offer you’ve had, aren’t you?’

‘Suppose so.’

Leather-Jacket paid for his records and said he was going to pop next door, but he was soon back:

‘There’s no one there.’

Having paid for my CDs, I spoke to Dale about next door’s shop, telling him of my experience.

‘Well, I had a woman in here recently who told me she’d passed a comment about his prices being a little on the steep side, and he promptly told her to clear off, in rather more colourful terms than that.’

‘That’s good customer relations, isn’t it?’ I commented.

‘He took on those premises recently, and I think he only has taken a year or so initially. He came in and told me he intended to put me out of business,’ claimed Dale, ‘But I’ve been here for twenty-one and a half years. He said he was bringing 10,000 records in to sell, along with sporting memorabilia.’

‘Surely he’d be better off liaising with you so that you could complement each other and then bring in more business, as I’m sure more people would make a trip here if they knew there were two shops together,’ I suggested.

Clearly there was a rare case of close proximity record-rage going on and these two didn’t seem to be hitting it off with each other. So I asked neighbour Michael Lagdon at Heroes for his thoughts on operating next to Dale:

‘I have collected vinyl for over 30 years and, having been a DJ around the world, have also amassed a lot of vinyl needed to keep up with the latest genres. I play music at some of the big boxing shows and have been a boxing fan for a similar length of time and that is why most of the memorabilia in the shop at present is boxing related. It was coincidental that the adjoining shop sells vinyl. He has been in Chesham for over 10 years with vinyl on sale, but that is not his main trade. It does help me a little bit being next door as people who used to come to him are now spilling over into my shop and boosting my trade – as a collector it’s good to find two shops so close.’

Back in Chesham some months later, it was a Monday morning. Dale and a (different) young female assistant were shelving boxes full of model cars, Bob Marley was playing on the in-shop system and customers were popping in to pass the time of day with Dale. Business seemed brisk. I’d tried to go in to Heroes initially – the shop was shut with a handwritten telephone number on the door the only indication it was still trading. In the window, displayed LP covers were fading from exposure to the sun. Dale seemed to have the upper hand in their rivalry. ‘I wouldn’t run a business like that,’ chortled Dale when I asked him about next door, and when I checked the Heroes’ website there was little, if any, reference to vinyl.

Later, discussing these two rivals in Second Scene, Julian agreed that Dale’s records could be better kept and his prices were usually far too high. ‘I think he prices them directly from a guide, but doesn’t bother checking condition – but you can often find something underpriced, though.’ Julian was spot on. I went through Dale’s vinyl, finding a sealed copy of G T Moore & The Reggae Guitars’ scarce, 8-track 2017 LP, The Harry J Sessions, for a very fair £12. The other several hundred I went through were either in my opinion too expensive or in poor condition. I also helped myself to his ‘fiver off if you spend £20 on CDs’ offer, picking up albums by Justine, Human Beast, Chantel McGregor and Micki Free.

I departed, wondering how Dale’s Heroic battle would ultimately play out, only to receive an explanation from Mike at Heroes for his Monday absence: ‘Have just got back from holiday so the Monday being closed was a one-off.’ Mike also explained why his website was not at its best: ‘New website is currently being built and should be launched next week.’ But I must admit he then surprised me by explaining why ‘I am not expecting to list much vinyl on the site, only special items.’

I didn’t quite understand this until he revealed: ‘It’s not worth the hassle with awkward buyers of vinyl challenging grading, etc, or even swapping their old scratched vinyl for my better copies.’

I was shocked to think fellow record collectors could stoop to such a dishonest act.