mentally deficient people on craigslist (RR)
spivy
866 Posts
so i responded to an add about 600 records for sale. the guy selling the records said they were in excellent condition and that they were mostly mid 70's- early 80's soul/disco type stuff. he was asking 2 bucks a record or 1 dollar each if 50 or more were bought. i said cool and went over to check them out. i figured most would be crap but i was hoping to find a few things i could use. i show up and all the records are in crates out in the hallway. he again tells me that everything is two bucks a pop and that he'll discount if i buy bulk. i say "cool" and he goes into his apartment and shuts the door. i start digging and instantly know that this collection was a waste of time coming out to look at. tons of common ass disco and late 70's jazz funk. mixed in with the crap are some decent titles... donald byrd- places and spaces, roy ayers- vibrations, cecil holmes- the blaxploitation lp etc, but nothing exceptional or that rare. i ended up with a pile of about 10 records that i was willing to buy (5 of the 10 i didn't even want but i felt bad only buying $10 worth of records). i would have bought a bunch more stuff ( every al green record... etc.) but most of the records turned out to be in lousy condition.dude comes back out into the hall and i tell him i'm sorry but i could only find a few things i could use due to the fact that the records were in less then optimum condition. he looks a little irritated so i tell him that i'm sorry i couldn't use more and that i appreciate him letting me go through his records. he looks at the little pile i put together and says " well you know these are the best titles!" i say "yeah i guess?" and he says "$25!". now i'm like "what?" he says it again "25!" i respond with " dude... you said they were 2 bucks a pop, that would make this pile $20." (keep in mind i only really want 5 of the records anyway). he goes " yeah but these are the better titles!" WTF??? i turned to him and tersely said " sorry man! no thanks." he then went off about how craigslist is a hassle and how nobody responded to his add and how people must not really want records anymore. HUH??? excuse me? i'm here right? so i told the guy to have a stoop sale, wished him goodluck and walked out. now i know what some of you are thinking... " dude- it was only an extra 5 bucks! " but that is exactly the point. it is the principal of it. dude said 2 bucks a pop sooooooo the records are two bucks a pop. nothing worse than a guy getting cold feet about doing business. i'd rather waste my night then give that shit head an extra 5 bucks.i'm happy too 'cuz i took that 5 bucks, went to the bar and bought a six point ale with it. fuck that guy!
Comments
49 records = $98
50 record = $50
This pricing scheme should have been the first sign of mental deficiency.
In my experience there are three kinds of people who sell records on Craigslist:
1) The holy grail person with records. Has no clue what they have or how much it might be worth, tends to end up with a box(es) of records via a relative or neighbor. Doesn't have a turntable, or if they do, are into different kinds of music. I have gotten many boxes of records from people of these sort for free just by being friendly to them.
2) The dude really pushing to make some money off his or her records. Tends to get a zillion responses on Craigslist, and usually the records are much less impressive than advertized, or they're looking to sell the collection as a whole. Tend to be older, grumpy, and have strange conceptions about what is rare. One dude left me 5 messages on my phone with detailed directions to his house, reminding me in each one that he had a spinal cord disability and that he had lots of Rhythm and Blues (and then told me when I got there that I was the 5th person to roll through)
3) That one person in your area who posts the same ad every few days (in the Bay Area it's the dude who is sweating to unload a Beatles record for $15). They obviously never get any responses, or if they do people have visited and discovered that it's a waste of time. A lot of these people are trying to unload hundreds of 90s R&B, Freestyle, House, and Hip-Hop records at $1 a record. Yikes.
I love these posts... the people you deal with have started to become one of the more interested aspects of the record game for me. The more you encounter these situations the more practice you get at trying to find some logic that works for each type.
I got my ass chewed out by this old lady yesterday for cherry picking her collection. She came in and I told her OK I got some picked out that we can use. She's looking at the huge pass pile and I say $20 and she's like "For all this?!" and I say no those ones over there... a stack of about 10 lps and 10 45s. She's like "What?! I don't want to sell some of them! I have to sell all of them!" I wanted to hide my face when she said "Oh my I'm VERY UPSET NOW!". I gave her every out in the world. I said I'll carry all these back to your car and you can have the stack I pulled back to take to half-price books to get an offer or go to goodwill to get a tax receipt for the donation. She was still pissed. Her husband who was silent the whole time finally said "GET THE $20 AND LET'S GO."
I belive the policy was actually "$2 a record, except the ones you want"
You can do a pretty good job of reading people over the phone, with the exception of records, because people lose their minds when near them.
I scored pretty nicely on craigslist last night. Sold my wife's G4 laptop within an hour of posting it for $600. No tax, no paypal, just cash in my hand.
Yeah, that was it.
damn... this may be me.
JT's CL Game Revealed!
Are the fish biting?
today i visited a place where the ad said 5000 records. he didn't even have any records there, just a list of records. there couldn't have been more than 200 in the list. i'm glad he actually saved my back some pain by bending down and looking through that crap.
he wanted $60 too for a lot of it was bullshit 80s dollar records. crazy. i did buy a copy of brave new world from him cause i kind of felt sorry for him. oh that was $60 per record.
i have no idea what you mean spelunker
I mean is your Craigslist scheme working? Those kinds of records are hard to unload...
bargain city!!
people on craigslist are nuts or normal, there is no in-beween.
jinx- you still up ole man?
ohhhh... yeah. i have a garage sale once a month and people come out to it. i bring different boxes over from my storage every third sale. gotta switch stuff up.
and yeah i have about 3-4000 80s 12s that a few japanese and local DJs have been running through.
then again... not all my records suck. a lot of em do... but shit, ive already sold 1000 12s since the beginning of february and i still have these local djs trying to come back and buy more.
ps- whose the "dj/collectro" in santa cruz w/ the 1-10$ raer on CL?
was that a typo or a strutteurino?
why you pissin in your own cheerios man, nothin but heatery in your storage, promos by the pound!
its exciting to see my storage i wont front... but im bored with my stock and miss diggin and getting new vinyl. new cats to the storage are always "where do i start?" but for me since ive owned them and know whats there im tired of em.
while i do have a couple big collections coming to me via another party, its not MY dig. running around and finding hundreds or thousands of records a week was my thing. you know that... now im lucky if i get 10 records a month. just isnt the same...
oh well... im not the same.
Haha that was me trying to unload a bunch of junk. Had a few people come by, made some money, then took it downtown to L**os, home of the world's most incompetent buyer/grader, and got $66 in credit for about 40 dollar bin pieces (dude didn't even make offers on anything remotely valuable, I've heard through the Grapevine he passed on the Invaders LP among other stuff)
Meanwhile, right as I got there they unloaded a late 60s early 70s jazz & soul collection which I bought most of, all priced around $3 a record. That store is an absolute joke.
Next time this happens, take a stack of 25 records up to the dude and hand him $50. When you're confident that he thinks the transaction is over, go back to the crates and pull out another 25 records. Take several steps toward the seller as if planning to cough up some more $$ and then turn toward the door and exit. If the seller protests, explain the pricing scheme to him as if he were a small child.
situations like that its always better to just pull a "walk away, son". That dude is probably sitting there steaming about how his plans to make tons of cash off beat up common records fell through. My rules of thumb. 1. Be Nice the whole time no matter how much of a dick the dude is. 2. Act like you dont know about, or really want the records. 3. As soon as Somebody gets jumpy over prices, slowly slip your ass out your pants, take a fat squat on his floor (preferably in the vicinity of the records for posterity).4. run away, son.
yo Ac_Mo hows LA? We gotta meet up sometime soon.
Straight emo and punk kids pricing records at that spot. I have a friend who works there and she has told me she knows nothing about anything but rockabilly.She says its mostly condition that they look at not titles. Luckily it sometimes works out good for fellas like us. did you pick up anything of note?
Flight tomorrow boyee