My brief period of time working in the Oxfam shop has made me realise how narrow the boundaries are between good and bad luck. In the past week or so I’ve seen so many records, which are almost valuable. Most of the time it’s not huge amounts of money were talking about but if the record was in the original sleeve or in better condition then maybe it would be worth £20 rather £1. Indeed we have one record, which could have been worth £45 in the original picture sleeve, if it had been in a certain version of that sleeve (and in perfect condition) that sum could have risen to £400.

Of course it would have been great for Oxfam if that had been the case, but generally speaking I really don’t like the whole rare record syndrome. Surely it’s best that people get excited because they like the “music” not the fact that it could make them a shed load of dosh on e-bay.

I’ve never really had anything of great value until my dad decided to give up on vinyl and go CD only a few years ago. So much of his music had acted as my guide in previous years, so I was delighted to have it passed onto me. Included in the collection were a couple of good jazz albums by a now pretty obscure British sax player from the 1960’s. I’d enjoyed them albums over the years without giving any thought to any value that they may have.

One day someone bought some albums by this musician into Imperial to sell and Mark told me how much they worth!! Sad to say, since then I always been a bit uncomfortable about playing them, I guess I fear damaging something which has a different sort of value attached to it now. In truth I would never sell the records anyway, they are part of me, trouble is all the other records I have are the same.

Sometimes I really envy the MP3 generation, they will never have the storage problems of our generation. I also admire them because they just want the music, not the scarcity value.