Record Store Day Postscript

In Pursuit of Flexi Discs

That was fun, I guess. 

The swim carpool has gotten, overall, much more complicated in recent weeks.  Texts fly back and forth all day.  Sometimes, two different people show up to pick up CoolDaughter #1 for practice.  The bottom line, though, is that I almost never have to drive to swimming anymore.  So Saturday morning I had time to head over to Jack’s Music Shoppe by nine for Record Store Day.

I was after two things, mainly.  I got one, the “KROKODIL” single by St. Vincent.  It’s a red seven-inch, and it’s a great, hard rock track.  Jack’s, though, never got a copy of the Domino Records Smugglers Way flexi-zine, a twenty-four page magazine of sorts containing five, different colored flexi discs by the likes of Dirty Projectors and New Jersey’s Real Estate.  Flexi discs are really horrible sounding singles pressed onto thin, flexible vinyl that you can play on a turntable.  They used to be given out as promotional items on the backs of cereal boxes or as pages in magazines.

I’m not really a record collector.  I’m a married, suburban dad with a couple of kids and a corporate job, but this multi-colored, flexi thing just sounded great to me.  I can be a little bit obsessive sometimes, and I spent the next couple of days trying to get a copy on eBay.  I learned a bit about the power of marketing and group psychology during my pursuit.

Smugglers Way retailed, I think, for around twenty dollars, maybe less.  A few copies showed up on eBay by late Saturday morning.  I put in some bids, going up to around forty-five dollars once or twice.  The things sold for over a hundred bucks.  It's cool, but it's not that cool.  I gave up on ever owning this little magazine containing five, square, flexible, previously unreleased singles in blue, red, green, orange, and yellow.

Then, this afternoon, I peeked at eBay again.  A few more copies had appeared for sale, and I put in a few bids.  As of five-thirty today, I am the proud owner of Domino’s Smugglers Way flexi-zine -- for twenty-four dollars and nineteen cents.  I was lucky, but the market has definitely shifted as the Record Store Day 2012 frenzy has subsided.  Monday’s going rate seems to be around thirty dollars.

I’m not sure that the eBay price normalization on something like Smugglers Way really says that the level of interest generated by the marketing build-up and the limited releases of Record Store Day was just a weekend phenomenon.  Though, I wouldn’t have that much trouble believing that the “Hey, Record Store Day is every day” crowd are the only ones that will be paying any real attention to record stores until it all starts up again next year.

Like I said at the beginning, for me, it was fun, and I buy music almost every week of the year.  Sometimes I even buy it from a record store.  I could really see myself getting into collecting these flexi discs, too.

One last bit: I also, impulsively, bought Wilco’s The Whole Love box set.  That netted me a second copy of their Black Friday Record Store Day release of the Speak Into The Rose EP.  It comes on red, translucent vinyl, and I may do some kind of contest where the winner will get my extra copy.  Stay tuned.