Selling and Buying 78s on eBay: A Few Thoughts

[Cody K]

Recently a forum member posted a link to a particularly dumb listing for a lot of records on eBay -- no picture, no titles, no grading, no real description of the records being offered. Having become just a little addicted to buying records on eBay, I've been thinking about the qualities in a listing that make me more likely to want to buy a given record, and the (negative) qualities that make me want to steer clear. Here goes:

1. Show the Record!: A lot of sellers, even some highly regarded ones, tend to show pictures of the label only, often with the rest of the disc masked by a sleeve. Reputable sellers can be trusted to provide an accurate grade, but it still seems pretty obvious that a potential buyer has a better chance to make an assessment of a record's condition when there's a clear photograph of the entire record, preferably taken in a good strong light that shows a record's gloss (or lack of it). The condition of the label is secondary, at least to me. I think most of us buy records to play more than to admire the label, and while the condition of a label can be a clue as to the condition of the actual disc, the grooves are what matters most. Sometimes I'll pass on a record I might like, especially if it's not inexpensive, simply because I can't see the darn thing.

2. Grade Carefully, Give Full Descriptions!: Grading is complicated by its subjectivity -- one person's VG+ might be another's plain old V. It's tough buying records when you can't pick them up and examine them. Recently I got a record from a seller I like that had been graded V++. One side was true to that grading, but the other side was badly stripped and no better than G -- and that was the side I bought the record for. We resolved the issue cordially, but a more careful grading (and a picture of both sides, not just the shiny one) would have prevented the problem in the first place. If there's anything especially notable about the record, make a note of it -- the more information, the better the chance of a good sale.

3. Wipe Those Suckers OFF!: Another one I was disappointed with lately was a scarce title described in the listing as V+ and a "great player". Again, the picture showed the label only, so I went by the description and grading when bidding on it. It's on the Harmony label, and those and other Columbia client labels of the mid- to late '20s tend to stand up to years of careless handling better than most, and often play well even if they look bad -- so I'm not shy about buying them even if they're said to be V. This one arrived really dirty with what looked like the gritty dust that comes from being stashed for years in an old basement. It's certainly not a "great player", and what's especially irritating is that the seller, an experienced one who handles a lot of scarce records, had apparently graded it as such having played it, possibly a few times, without cleaning off the grit. I don't know why a person who knows his records would do this. The result is the kind of distortion that comes from playing such a dirty record, grit ground into the grooves. It took me only a couple of minutes to clean it properly, but the damage is done and can't be fixed.

4. Keep Your Shipping Costs Down!: Sellers can charge whatever they want for shipping. I don't know about you, but to me it seems as if the common charge of $4.00 is a pretty fair baseline, usually enough to cover proper boxing/packaging and Media Mail postage, and many sellers manage to include tracking at that cost. Call me cheap, but when I have to pay $6.50 (which doesn't even include tracking) for the same packing and boxing that others do for four, I'm gonna consider that extra $2.50 as added to the price of the record, and bid accordingly, or maybe just skip it.


Time was when every roadside junk shop had a stash of dollar 78s to pick through, but what with people selling their junk on the internet, those shops are few and far between now. I don't mind paying a little more online for a title I want, but it's a lot easier to do when sellers are conscientious about how they go about it. Thoughts?

[STARR-OLA]

Excellent post and well thought out.I agree with your premise but if only sellers could read this.Bought a few old 20s blues 78s and they werent cheap and came from respected sellers,1 was broken in 4 pieces,the other in half....got the purchase price refunded and spent 1 week gluing and getting the flats exact,now there my favorite records.

[epigramophone]

I have never sold 78's on eBay and only buy them if they are of exceptional interest. In my experience most dealers know how to pack properly but most private sellers do not.

Many UK dealers will hold on to purchases until the buyer has bought several records. They will then post them in one parcel which brings the cost down.

Long before I discovered eBay I sold a very rare record to a well known dealer in the USA. I asked his advice on packing and followed it to the letter. The record made it in one piece.

[Cody K]

Reading this again today, I realize that the original post is more of a rant than anything that's likely to be useful to forum members. I suspect that most of us here are buyers rather than sellers of records on eBay, and my thoughts are unlikely to reach eBay sellers, which is hard to do except individually.

Most eBay sellers who handle 78s regularly do know the proper way to pack a record safely. It really is the one-off seller who often doesn't. In some cases when a record I've wanted is listed by a seller who might not be familiar with the way to pack safely (as evidenced by the lack of other 78s among their listings), I've contacted them and politely suggested the sandwich>padding>box way as a means of protecting against breakage. Mostly this has been received well, though in at least two or three cases it's been ignored, resulting -- predictably -- in records arriving broken. It was smart of you to ask your buyer how to pack the record for shipping. It's bad enough when a ten-dollar record is broken in transit, but in the case of a very rare record it would be much worse.

Many American sellers too will hold records for buyers who intend to bid on more than one. It can be very helpful.

[marcapra]

I've bought a lot of records on Ebay and one thing I would caution you on is 12" 78s. Many sellers grade based only on the look of the grooves and don't check for warpage. Many 12"78s have some degree of warping and when I complained to a seller about the warped records, he didn't believe me and wanted to see a picture. Then I thought how do you take a picture of a warp that you only see when it's turning? I didn't want to go to the time and trouble of filming it, so we settled on a reduction in price, although the seller was not happy. Of course the best way to buy records is in person at phonograph meets, but the rare ones sometimes you have buy in other ways.

[Cody K]

Agreed that 12" 78s can involve special problems. I haven't had any trouble with warpage, but their size makes it impossible to ship in the same size box that most sellers use for 10" records, leading to scary special solutions -- like the time a scarce 12" arrived wrapped in a few sheets of newspaper in a pizza box. Luckily the box was corrugated, so strong enough that the record arrived in one piece. Probably also beneficial was that the seller was only in the next state over. I wouldn't trust that kind of package to survive cross country.

The other problem with 12" 78s is that less experienced sellers may assume that they're as durable as vinyl LPs, I guess because of the size. One arrived to me properly sandwiched between corrugated cardboard flats, but stuck into an oversize manila envelope. I still consider it a minor miracle that that one survived a journey of about 500 miles.

I don't really like buying records (or anything, really) on eBay much, but I never seem to get to shows because of distance. And there is the benefit of being able to find scarcer titles fairly easily online. But once a person starts keeping an eBay watch list, it's all over -- buying from it and adding to it tend to become addictive.

[VintageTechnologies]

Cody, I agree with all of your points. They are all commonsense, but commonsense apparently isn't common anymore!

I would like to add another factor that induces me to buy records - sound clips. Some dealers post a link to sound files already on the Internet, to give some idea what the recording sounds like. Better yet, some dealers embed sound clips into their eBay listing of the actual record being sold. Visual grading is so very subjective that hearing the actual record is a tremendous marketing tool.

Finally, spell the titles and artists right. I "stole" a rare Tamagno recording that was a "sleeper" because the name was spelled wrong.

[Cody K]

Seems like sound clips can work both ways. I've listened to clips taken from records that looked a lot better than they sounded in the clip, and said...uh, no thanks. A lot will depend on the equipment the seller uses to make the clip, I think: if the mp3 clip is made on cheapo equipment (think: Crosley), it'll probably sound worse than the record played on a better system. Then too, any digital copy that hasn't been tweaked for optimum listenability has to be "interpreted" by the hearer, sort of translated back mentally into an idea of what the actual record probably sounds like. I do appreciate it when a seller states that their clip hasn't been filtered or otherwise altered, because that's at least some assurance that the clip should be a relatively close representation of what the actual record may sound like. But then, the same sort of interpretation is also necessary when looking at .jpegs of any item for sale online, especially when they're of low resolution, or badly lit, or poorly composed, so it's all part of the game. Sometimes it kinda bugs me when a seller includes a clip of a relatively obscure record that might fly under the radar; someone who doesn't know the particular music might listen to the clip, say, "Hey, this is great!" and bid when they wouldn't have otherwise. What bugs me about this is that then I might end up paying more. But that's all in the game, too.

As far as misspelling information in the title of the listing -- no mercy for that! If a seller can't be bothered to copy correctly a few words from a record that's right in front of them, well, good for me, and good for you! A couple of months ago I got a small but nice lot of mid-'20s Fletcher Henderson records for five bucks because the headline the seller used was "Five Flectcher [sic] 78s". "Henderson" wasn't even included. Dumb, but whaddaya gonna do -- not take advantage of it?