Charity Shop Trawl

[cloughie]

Toddy in the BHF shop…

Vaughan Williams. The Collector’s Edition. 30 CDs. £2.00 😉

Certainly more that 3 for £1 there pg. Even if you already had 75% or even more duplications that is amazing value - even if shelf/floor space likely to be challenged!

[Bryn]

Having found and purchased 20 CDs comprising a wide range of mainly 'classical' CDs yesterday (25p each) from a local charity and mobility scooter hire shop, today I returned to purchase a further tranche, though this time of music I have no intention of ever listening to. At 25p a throw, the good-condition jewel cases (several of which are for multiple discs) are what I was after. A couple are even of the curved-cornered SACD variety. At a different and fairly newly opened charity shop, I spied a boxed set of series 1 to 8 of Rab C Nesbitt for £3. How could I resist? To complement it, I have ordered a used (good condition) copy of the scripts of the first 6 episodes.

[Tapiola]

Yesterday's unexpected finds (South Belfast is generally a desert in this respect):

R Strauss - Zarathustra (Phil/Ormandy) plus Don Juan and Eulenspiegel (VPO/Previn) and excerpts from Rosenkavalier (LPO/Del Mar)

J Strauss II - Waltzes (Boskovsky)

Beethoven - Missa Solemnis (JEG, 1990))

Stravinsky - Rite (Cleveland/Boulez, 1991)

All for £1,50

I find this Rite highly disappointing and it will be returned next Saturday whence it came,

[oddoneout]

Last week a local animal charity shop had put out 3 large boxes of CDs with a notice on saying "FREE" so I had a root through, not expecting to find anything remotely interesting as such assortments are usually of the popular repertoire. However I did find 6 (and made a donation). One of them has been put straight into the charity shop bag(not the one it came from), but not before a) confirming an impression(negative) I formed about some organ transcriptions at a recital earlier this year, and b)amusement as a result of coming across a caustic comment about it.
The disc is "English Organ Music 2" with Donald Hunt "recorded on the Bradford Computing Organ at Worcester Cathedral" at Worcester. I looked up the organ which is how I came across this comment

"English Organ Music 2" played on the Bradford Computing Organ in Worcester Cathedral by Donald Hunt. NAXOS 8.550773, 1993. The mediocrity of the instrument was well matched to the choice of music, which among other things explains why arguments still continue as to whether Elgar was "great" or not, and why many mainstream musicians find the organ laughable. How our finest executants can immerse themselves in this sort of thing saddens me. A completely awful CD. Still, it might help to ensure the survival of the pipe organ! (And, yes, I did hear this instrument in the flesh as well).

from here http://www.colinpykett.org.uk/EndOfPipeOrgan.htm
At the other end of the artistic value scale is a 2 CD set of Late LvB quartets, Op 127, 130, 133, and 135, recorded many years ago by Quartetto Italiano, which have been giving me much pleasure.

[pastoralguy]

Yesterday I acquired Elizabeth Schwarzkopf’s ‘Recital’ box set on EMI for £10! 31 CDs. I’m not the greatest fan of Lieder but I’ve heard so much about these discs over the years I fell I should give them a go.

[Jonathan]

Unusually successful haul in York this morning, all from the Oxfam shop near Monk Bar (not the bigger one on Micklegate, there was nothing there that jumped out at me)

Arensky: Ballet Egyptian Nights (complete)
Franck: Le Chasseur Maudit, Psyche, Les Eolides (with the conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud whose latest disc I was reading about yesterday)
Weinberg: Symphony no.21 and Polish Songs (Toccata) and
Glenn Gould Edition: Beethoven trans Liszt - Symphony no.5 and 1st movement of Symphony no.6

Total just under £16 but still cheaper than buying new!

[Barbirollians]

£3 La Traviata - Caballe/Bergonzi/MIlnes Pretre - a RCA recoding from the 1960s that I was unaware of - it's a splendid account . Bergonzi is particularly fine .

[CallMePaul]

Unusually successful haul in York this morning, all from the Oxfam shop near Monk Bar (not the bigger one on Micklegate, there was nothing there that jumped out at me)

Arensky: Ballet Egyptian Nights (complete)
Franck: Le Chasseur Maudit, Psyche, Les Eolides (with the conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud whose latest disc I was reading about yesterday)
Weinberg: Symphony no.21 and Polish Songs (Toccata) and
Glenn Gould Edition: Beethoven trans Liszt - Symphony no.5 and 1st movement of Symphony no.6

Total just under £16 but still cheaper than buying new!

Oxfam tends to be dearer than other charity shops, and not just for music. I recently found Carlos Kleiber's Brahms 4 (£2.99) and James Conlon conducting Zemlinsky symphonies (£4.99) in their Manchester store. I rarely see classical Cds in other charity shops.

[pastoralguy]

Oxfam tends to be dearer than other charity shops, and not just for music. I recently found Carlos Kleiber's Brahms 4 (£2.99) and James Conlon conducting Zemlinsky symphonies (£4.99) in their Manchester store. I rarely see classical Cds in other charity shops.

Yes, we have three Oxfam Music Shops in Edinburgh and the one with the most interesting stock has outrageous prices. For instance, the Blomstedt set of the Bruckner symphonies is selling for £55 - more than it would cost new from Amazon. However, they do have a policy of reducing discs that have been around for a long time. For instance, I picked up the Jansons’ Bruckner 8 for a pound earlier this week. It had started out as £10, then reduced to £7.50, then £5.00, then £3.00 before ending up in the £1 bargain bin!

The other two shops are certainly more expensive than the shop I’ve just described but their discs tend to be around £2.99. Anything that’s an SACD will have another £3.00 added.

[Jonathan]

Very true about Oxfam however I looked in numerous other charity shops last Saturday and none of them had anything I was interested in! There was one disc in there marked up at £17.99

[pastoralguy]

Very true about Oxfam however I looked in numerous other charity shops last Saturday and none of them had anything I was interested in! There was one disc in there marked up at £17.99

I once encountered a cd of Dennis Brain playing the Mozart Horn Concertos that was in a glass case with the price of £19.99! ‘Why so expensive ‘, I asked? ‘Well, it’s a very rare classical cd. You rarely come across classical music on cd…’

[Jonathan]

Ouch!! I think someone here said they picked prices up from Amazon second hand prices but I could be mistaken.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Ouch!! I think someone here said they picked prices up from Amazon second hand prices but I could be mistaken.

I stood next to the chap with the price labeller and he was using the Amazon app on his 'phone. But I already knew they used the Amazon price with (IIRC £1 off) and excluding p&P. I stopped looking (and now, visiting) their bookshop at all because on reflection I felt sometimes I would end up buying a CD I didn't strictly need, to justify the time spent on the visit.

Over the years I have also noticed the elimination of anywhere to sit - in the earlier days I would consider a stack of books and decide which ones I would buy, and which I would return to the shelves. At the same time the space in the shop has been taken up by "product" - cards, other stuff of the moment - chocolate from sustainable sources, etc etc - sometimes. These days, I'm taking saleable books to charity bookshops but not usually Oxfam. A local hospice shop manager explained to me that when a book doesn't sell, they register it on an app and get a (usually) flat rate payment from a large seller of secondhand books - so the book isn't pulped.

[Aureliano]

Yes, we have three Oxfam Music Shops in Edinburgh and the one with the most interesting stock has outrageous prices. For instance, the Blomstedt set of the Bruckner symphonies is selling for £55 - more than it would cost new from Amazon. However, they do have a policy of reducing discs that have been around for a long time.

I volunteer at an Oxfam bookshop on occasion. In general Oxfam do try to keep their prices below the secondhand market rate. It must be remembered however that the information they gather will in part be dependent on the depth of the search they have done. Also it is probable that some listing personnel might inadvisedly only check items currently up for sale elsewhere and not prices of items recently sold. But it should be remembered that Oxfam are doing their best for the charities they are supporting to maximise the return on items sold. But they also do want to make a sale, and if their pricing is slightly awry (which can be possible as there is no defined secondhand price for these things, just similar items up for current sale elsewhere) I would suggest that if you are particularly interested in an item that you can clearly demonstrate you can buy for cheaper elsewhere on a delivered basis (i.e. not a cheaper item for sale in the USA which would be more expensive if delivery charges are taken into consideration) that you ask to see the manager of the shop and ask if they could do a better price for you and explain why; they MAY be able to do better. I suggest this only for higher priced items as there is usually a lowest base price at which a particular shop might sell at. It also should be remembered that certain editions of CDs (for example particularly early editions) may have a higher secondhand worth than other editions even if they are the same actual recording.

Please note I am not in any way speaking on behalf of Oxfam, but merely give my opinion based on the voluntary work I have done.

[Aureliano]

I should add that a secondhand price search one day might give a completely different result when attempted on a different day depending on what is currently up for sale in the market. This also can give rise to what might seem to be "out of market" prices, but at the time of verification the price might have seemed reasonable.