[Sigbjørn]

Medimops also sells via Amazon marketplace, but in my experience their grading is often inaccurate, and the packaging not so sturdy.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Thanks for the tip! I found SOME of the titles on my want list there, but they were all sadly priced too high. Business as usual. But if one were just browsing randomly for titles on that site, there are deals to be found. Shipping to Norway would be 8 Euros per order, and then 2.50 per article.

[Sigbjørn]

I’d go for Discogs instead, ref. my earlier post.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Alas, the shipping prices on Discogs are ludicrous. I know you can sometimes click “more details” to see if the seller has put in any “custom” shipping costs in the product info that differ from the one given, but I’ve rarely found they are much cheaper.

[Sigbjørn]

Many of the sellers have expensive shipping, but not all. As I wrote on the previous page, I’ve made many orders where the final price per item (including shipping and VAT) landed somewhere between 50 and 100 NOK, for items in very good to mint condition.

[Nick Zwar]

You say that as if Discogs’ Shipping rates are “ludicrous”, though I don’t know what you mean… they just list what it costs to ship from one country to another. (As far as I can tell, just sampled.) I don’t see how they can ship any cheaper? I mean, how’d you ship? What does it cost to ship a CD from Norway to the EU or the US? Is that so much cheaper? The cheapest I could send a trackable CD to Norway (DHL) would be €16.-

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Some are probably correct, because shipping today is insane to begin with. But I often see 30, 40, 50 bucks listed as shipping price, which just sounds wrong on so many levels.

I just want something sent, without jewel case, with regular air mail. Not a lot of people offer that on Discogs. If I were to send a CD like that from Norway to the USA, for example, it would be about $6, to Germany $5. Rates differ from country to country, sure, but it would need to be in that region, max.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

By the way, there was an eBay seller called “onecentCDs” that I used a lot back in the 90s and 2000s. A lot of my collection was built up based on them. Usually managed to snag a CD for $3-4, max, after the bidding, and then they had the option to send without jewel case, which made the total about $6-7 (and at a time when the exchange rate was much better than it is now). I wonder what happened to them? Well, I googled a bit, and found this thread, which tells how they made a fortune and probably retired from e-commerce altogether in the 2000s:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/whatever-happened-to-jay-and-maries-one-cent-cds-ebay.576457/

It’s a new entity like ‘onecentCDs’ that I need to step forward. 🙂

[Nick Zwar]

Because shipping a CD without jewel case without being tracked… I don’t know. I guess most buyers would not want their CDs sent way (the danger that the CD becomes scratched or just gets lost is enormous). Often times, when CDs are in a jewel case, the jewel case arrives cracked; you know of people are irked just because of scratched jewel cases. I imagine it would be worse if the CD gets scratched.
So usually, people want their packages tracked and their CDs in jewel cases and securely wrapped.

[Nick Zwar]

It’s a new entity like ‘onecentCDs’ that I need to step forward

Interesting story, never heard of them… but the story suggests that they eventually discarded the business because there was no longer money to be made in used CDs and were likely being even stuck on surplus inventory. I don’t think those times are comin’ back. 🙂

[Thor Joachim Haga]

I was always very casual and loose about the state of items. I was and is fine with people sending just the CD and inserts in a padded envelope, via regular air mail. I had plenty of spare jewel cases (still have a couple of dozen). And as for items getting lost, sure, there’s a risk. But well worth taking, IMO. In the 20 years between 1995-2015, when I did most of my international online transactions, maybe 5 were lost out of several hundreds. Not bad.

But yes, I know I’m living in the past. It’s where I find comfort when things are as they are. I doubt we’ll get a vendor like “OnecentCDs” again, or any other similar vendor.

[Nick Zwar]

I have replaced jewel cases, no problem, though I do not tolerate scratches on CDs. I suppose most people would go up the wall if their CDs arrived just flimsily put into an envelope. (I think I would too.)

When I started to buy music, there was a large record store here in Cologne, the Cologne Saturn Music Dome. It claimed to be the store with the largest record collection in the world. I don’t know if that was true, but I have never seen a larger one. At their height in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the classical music selection alone was on two department store floors, floor one was opera, choir, vocal, solo recitals, floor two was orchestral, chamber, modern/avant-garde etc. Their soundtrack section was huge too. If something was out on CD, they had it. Even in their later days, when they started to “size down” on CDs, they still had a large soundtrack selection where you could even find Intrada and La-La Land special releases (like the 3CD CONAN or the John Williams Harry Potter Box from LLL) next to “regular” soundtrack releases. Over the years, though, I saw the store shrinking… some floors were diverted to other business or rented out, and in the final years, all of the CDs were on one double sized floor, … and even that floor space was shared with a (considerable) selection of DVDs and Blurays and Vinyls and Posters/Memorabilia. But a few years ago, that all stopped. Nowadays, the former record store is a gamer location, “Xperion”, the rest of the floors are office floors. They don’t sell any CDs anymore in that store (they do still sell some CDs in their regular electronic chain stores).
CDs are like vinyl now… there are a few dedicated collectors who still buy (and sell) stuff, there are labels who still print LPs and CDs and cater to that niche, but it is no longer a mass market with mass market overflow (that then ends up on the used market). This will never going to change back. Quite the contrary, I’m actually quite amazed how resilient CDs are and how persistent the niche is. But it’s a niche, and even when it is a persistent niche, it is nevertheless a niche that is still shrinking. So you are right, I don’t see how you will ever get a vendor like OneCentCDs, I guess they had their time and then it was over.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Yes, I remember hearing about that store. There were obviously some other great ones around the world, like Amoeba in LA, Footlights in NY, a couple in the UK and a few in Japan. Japan is still holding strong, by the way, as far as physical media is concerned, but they’re somewhat unique, and the prices are hefty. In Norway, we had Akers Mic. in Oslo, which is probably the greatest record store in Norwegian history, which closed shop permanently in 2004. We had a mail order vendor too, called Compacthuset, based out of Haugesund in the west and with a telephone book-sized catalogue (at their height, the largest selection in the Nordic countries), that I used a lot in high school. They closed in 1998 already.

I realize those times won’t come back, but I have this faint and naïve hope that somewhere out there – on the large internet – a vendor exists that is less concerned about making tons of money, and more concerned about moving product. There is only one chain left in Norway, Platekompaniet, and that is extremely expensive. There are some used record stores left, but they’re expensive too. The only way to get properly cheap CDs is if you bump into some thrift store or flea market, but then you have to wade through millions of crappy “Absolute Music 35”-type CDs to find a gem or two. Rarely good sountracks, and CERTAINLY not any titles on my want list.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Does anyone have any experience with buy & sell Facebook groups?

[Nick Zwar]

Yes, I can see that… flea markets, garage sales, etc. are probably your best bet to find a bargain. Lukas of course is currently selling of lots of used film scores for good prices (as far as I can see… I haven’t bought anything there… because I bought most of the stuff I wanted back when it came out… few CDs nowadays that I missed), but of course these are still regular “collector’s prices”, not “garage sale prices” from people who don’t know what they’ve got.
I lucked out recently and found the “missing pieces” in my Ligeti collection… I did have already all the Teldec recordings, but only some of the “Ligeti Edition” from Sony… now it’s complete.
Not sure, but I almost think that was the last major “gap” in my collection that “needed” closing. (It was irking me… as I bought the first of these 20 years ago, and by now this was “almost complete” but not quite, so there were a couple of CDs missing… and now I finally got them.)

I have not bought and sold anything via Facebook groups, but I know that there is some trading of film scores going on.

[Forfatter]

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