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Topic: The Beatles' The White Album

21st Sep 2015, 11:52 AM
	Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3745 Points Moderator	Well at least that explains why I can't find a bloomin' White album myself! But this does serve to illustrate a point: There is a difference between Real, and Apparent rarity... If not many of a given item (Album, single, or CD etc.) were actually made, mainly due to lack of commercial interest from the public, but they are all in constant market circulation, this can give the impression that they may exist in greater numbers than is actually the case, but if a given title was made, and exists in vast quantities, but some git buys them all up and stashes them away from the market place due to whatever underlying psychological neurosis they may have, they can create a "market rarity", and through this, drive the price of those that do exist way up above perhaps, what a more natural circulation would support. So if you own a White album, this flump is doing you a favour, by adding value through "rarity" to your copy (assuming of course, you intend to realise that value at some point), but the rest of us have to pay through the nose as a result, if we really want one. But of course, I'm only bitter because I don't have one (soon as I do, I'll add him to my Christmas card list! ) However, it does afford the opportunity for me to point out also, a phenomenon I've observed on both ebay, and amazon, which comes from this: There are a few dolphins on ebay ("flippers"), who buy, then immediately sell at a mark up, but through this, give the impression of there being more copies of a given title available than there actually are... a fair portion of the listings of titles that generate interest are likely the same copies going through the market again and again. Likewise, I've been keeping tabs on a couple of items on Amazon, and noticed that the "in stock", and then the count down of how many are "left in stock" seems to correspond remarkably to how many begin to appear in the "used & new" listings in Amazon marketplace for those titles. Basically, it seems that Amazon uses it's power to bulk buy such stock (probably at a discount), and sell at a knock down price (maybe even making a loss) which no independent seller can compete with, but that lately these small sellers have apparently worked out that they just buy their stock from amazon stock itself, at this lower price, then relist it at a slightly higher price... ,,,Amazon doesn't care, as it gets the sales either direct to the customer, or through these re-listers, and it charges them to list the items, which probably offsets any lack of profit, or even loss they make through the original sale - cunning eh! - Lord knows what this does to their tax situation regarding these sales! Anyway, I shall console myself with the fact that I have singles copies of a few double albums that are significantly better than the white album (And besides, Revolver is The Beatles best album anyway, and so far it doesn't seem like anyone is hoarding those!)