[78-L] Record Pricing Guides: not a new story

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stewart, Joseph R" <RandyStewart at MissouriState.edu>
> Mike Harkin mentioned coin and stamp price guides.  Is there as much 
> dispute about THEIR listings are there are about RECORD price-guide 
> listings?  No one (ESPECIALLY not dealers I've asked!!) has ever 
> satisfactorily answered the question: if the book, coin and stamp 
> collector hobbies have "reliable" price guides (indeed, do they?), then 
> why is it so damned hard, not to mention contentious, with records?  Is 
> the longevity of the book/coin/stamp hobbies compared to the relative 
> youth of the serious record-collecting hobby, as one dealer told me a 
> number of years ago?
>
Well, stamp collecting goes back well over a century...and coin collecting 
perhaps
even further! As well, both sorts of collectors spend LARGE sums of money on 
their
hobbies, after acquiring all the "common stuff'...so they regard their 
collections as
significant assets, and thus need reliable and agreed-upon "official" guides 
to the
values of their holdings...?!

I would estimate that I have laid out, in total, $10,000 or less for my 
57,000 or
so 78's; I used to lay out a couple hundred a month on auction-list winnings
back when I had that kind of money to spend! These days, Record Research
is defunct...and Peter Leavitt, if living, no longer sends out auction 
lists. I'm
not yet up for dealing with Kurt's $3 minimum, since most of the 78's I'm
looking for are in the "odds & ends" category...hardly worth $3?! I'm
essentially trying to fill "gaps" in my sorted-by-number holdings...mostly
vocal (and a few dance-band) records which I haven't yet run across!
The idea is to get "complete runs" of Victors, Columbias and a few
other "non-rare" labels...particularly GG labels, which have fascinated
me for about 40 years...?!

Oddly enough, I actually enjoy listening to vocal "hits" from the 1908-
1920's era...?!

Steven C. Barr