Finding an unexected bargain in a chazza

[SpiderChrist]

On Monday I was in Godalming, Surrey (for sundry purposes which would be of no interest to you, I am quite sure) and found a near mint copy of Andrew Weatherall's three CD Masterpiece mix. Took it up to pay for it, and the Doris behind the counter says "CDs are three for a pound, so I'm going to have to charge you a pound for this"

Look it up on Discogs when I get home, and can't find a copy for sale under fifty quid.

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/3565528?ev=rb

Listening to it now and it's fucking great so far.

Have any other readers etc etc?

[Oz Oz Alice]

Not quite of the same value but I left Preston Oxfam with a copy of Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions; a CD copy of a Bobby Orlando best of compilation and vinyl copies of the first two OMD albums. Combined price of £6. I was a happy boy that day.

[phantom_power]

My best charity shop haul was getting 4 Echo and the Bunnymen albums and Snap by The Jam, all on vinyl and in really good nick, for a quid each

[Dusty Substance]

I left Preston Oxfam with a copy of Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions

I left my copy in the laundrette a few months back. Frankly, the worst thing to happen  in 2020.

As for chazza bargains, I know I'll never top the day I went into Oxfam in 2007 and picked up The Bends, What's The Story (Morning Glory), Stanley Road, Massive Attack's Protection, The Divine Comedy's Casanova, Bjork's Post and eight other albums from the 90s that I can't quite remember right now. All mint condition first edition vinyl, priced at a quid each but when I went to hand over £14, the cashier said "They're buy one, get one free today". Probably the greatest day of my life.

[frajer]

Not in the same league as those examples, but I was chuffed to find a Very Good-condition copy of Mark Danielewski's 'House of Leaves' in Skipton Oxfam for £6.

[sutin]

'Chazza'?!

[SpiderChrist]

'Chazza'?!

Mother?!

[Rizla]

I was once staggered to find an original copy of the ultra-rare self titled 1971 LP by Nuneaton psych fuzz duo  Fresh Maggots for 50p in a local cancer research shop. Even typing it now I wonder if I dreamed it. I was skint at the time, so despite the disc itself being in barely playable condition, I stuck it on eBay and some belgian bloke gave me £97 for it.

[kaprisky]

In 2019 I found the Hermit of Mink Hollow/Healing/Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect two-disc set and the A Wizard A True Star/Todd two-disc set (both by Todd Rundgren) in a Sue Ryder shop. They were doing a two-for-one sale so I ended up getting five albums, plus bonus tracks, for the princely sum of £1.25. There's one of those that I still haven't listened to yet!

[Brundle-Fly]

Not music, but I bought the Mad Men complete boxset for £2 last year.  It's on My List Netflix and quite low on my massively long eventually must see list but £2? I mean come on. I think it must've been £12 but the pricing gun stamp was faulty as the shop assistant looked like she was sucking a lemon when she rang it up.

[The Mollusk]

I've found heaps of gold in chazzers but most of it has just been according to personal tastes as opposed to actual monetary value, like, "wow! What the fuck is this obscure Jeffrey Lewis album doing here?!"

One that will always stick out as a very fine purchase is "Sing to God" by Cardiacs on CD, limited to only 3000 copies, which I paid £1 for.

I've obviously had much better luck in record exchanges, like the 3CD "mcluskyism" collection for £2, or (recently mentioned in another thread here) "Oscillons from the Anti-Sun" by Stereolab, which is 3CDs, a DVD and a load of stickers, for fucking 50p.

Oh! And the picture vinyl of Mayhem's "Dawn of the Black Hearts", limited to 666 copies, which I got for £40 and recently sold on eBay for £150. The buyer was Norwegian and I had a strong urge to shoot "Back from whence you came!" like George Oscar Bluth when I posted it off. But I didn't.

[dmillburn]

One that will always stick out as a very fine purchase is "Sing to God" by Cardiacs on CD, limited to only 3000 copies, which I paid £1 for.

I bought a load of copies of Maresnest on VHS from a shop in Blackpool in the early 90s, all brand new and all for a quid each. I only bought a few copies as it was this video that got me into the band, I adored it and was genuinely worried about wearing the tape out from playing it so many times.

I kept them for a few years then when rumours of the DVD came out I sold the lot apart from one, starting them at 99p and often getting well over £100 each for then. Cheers Tim.

[jobotic]

This, when Konono No1 was all the rage (although I hadn't heard them at that point).

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Za%C3%AFre-Musiques-Urbaines-Kinshasa/release/2428543

It's brilliant.

[SteveDave]

When I was unemployable in 2013 I found loads of gold in the many chazzas of Southgate, Parsons Green and Barnets (High and New).

The highlight of those times was finding "Monster Movie" by (The) Can for £1. It looked like it'd never been played and I swapped it for a £90 ticket to see Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall. In retrospect I think I was done. The day after finding that I found a mono "Pet Sounds" in a different shop but it had no price on it. I took it to the counter thinking it'd be £30 but the person said "All the records are £1" so I paid my money and ran out laughing. I sold that one for £50 on eBay.

The last time such luck befell me was about 5 years ago on an early Sunday morning trawl around Sense in Hackney. After I flicked through the records in the racks and found nothing, the fellow behind the counter said "We've had a load of new records in" and pointed to a long line next to him. I went through those and they were mostly RnB 12"s but I did find the first Scissor Sisters LP, "Tapestry" by Carole King and the "Labyrinth" soundtrack (which I gave to a friend as a birthday present little realizing that it's never been re-issued). Then near the end of the pile there were "Revolver" and "Sgt Peppers" in mono. I sprung up with these five records sort of splayed out so they could be counted and the man said "£5 please" Again I paid and ran away.

[Neomod]

This is Oscillations related, kind of. Bought this is a St Albans chazza years ago.




My sister had it when we were kids and I recalled it being a great game to "spin into the pop record scene". £3 it was. Found out it was going for £90 on ebay.

Sold it.

Still want it.

[Brundle-Fly]

Conversely, I remember a phase in the 1990s when 50s/60s/70s lounge/ easy listening/ library music was in vogue with DJs and collectors, a few London chazza shops really started to take the piss with their pricing. Ubiquitous James Last albums being sold for £15 a pop when previously they couldn't give them away. Similarly, Mantovani LPs that Bentley Rhythm Ace wouldn't touch with their sampling barge pole. Basically, any album from that era that had a dolly bird on the sleeve with the words STEREO SOUNDS in bold they were hiking up the prices. All back to £1 today though

[PaulTMA]

Promo version of The Walker Brothers 'Shutout' EP for 50p or £1 in a house clearance shop a couple of years ago.  It's not worth millions or anything, but I remember flicking through all the drivel completely on autopilot and initially skipped past it, before thinking 'surely not' and realised I wasn't seeing things.

Also around then I found the reel to reel tape of Smiley Smile for £6 in Manchester.  The confused shop owner said "I know who priced this, and he is a cunt" but kindly sold it to me anyway.

[poodlefaker]

The Manual by the KLF for a quid in a Stoke Newington chazzer, mid-90s.  Pre-ebay so I sold it to a dealer* who I think gave me about £8 and prob. sold it for about £30. A few years later you could find it for free on the internet.

*Paperback Writer - a music book shop in Denmark Street - what an amazing place that was, I used to spend hours browsing in there. It only lasted a copy of years, iirc.

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

Still live in hope that one day I'll wander in and find Chill Out in a charity shop that someone's accidentally stuffed with the library music/own-brand cover albums

[thugler]

Vinyl copy of Three feet high and rising by De la Soul (which unbeknowst to me is now out of print) in my local Oxfam for 3 quid, when everything else there tends to be at least 20 quid regardless of what it is. Also lots of cheap 60's/early 70's rock stuff at a market in eastern europe (czech republic maybe?) somewhere, some of them were slightly dodgy reissues on some non existent label but mostly legit and for absolutely fuck all. Luckily I had packed llight and basically filled my case with them.

[ASFTSN]

Doesn't happen much if at all now in my experience, charity shops have access to Discogs too and often price accordingly.

[jenna appleseed]

Went in a charity shop for the first time in ages and found some bloke called Chris[nb]Morris not De Burgh - though he was there as well[/nb] lurking on the cd shelf amongst the mostly usual tat .


Blue Jam cd for £1

Saw the spine, pulled it out and went OH MY GOD  (hopefully muffled by my mask)  & *really quietly* _fuck - never seen it in the wild before.

[Harry Badger]

a CD copy of a Bobby Orlando best of compilation

Great stuff. One day I'll get around to starting a thread about this guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

[flotemysost]

'Chazza'?!

At my secondary school you were either a 'chazza' (possibly 'shazza') or a 'grunger'. I was informed upon joining that I must be the latter, on account of wearing trousers rather than a skirt and having a Jansport backpack.

ANYWAY. Got a few decent hauls of CDs for £1 each in the Archway Crisis shop over the years, just rip them straight to my laptop and whack them on my iPod. Sadly I don't have any means to play vinyl but I still enjoy a good browse. The Oxfam bookshop in Crouch End normally has a good selection, I guess even millionaires run out of space or die sometimes.

I was thinking of starting a stupid thread a while ago about those certain albums you ALWAYS see in charity shops. On CD, the main ones I seem to notice everywhere are early-mid 2000s hyped-but-somewhat-flash-in-the-pan sort of albums, like

Hard-Fi - Stars of CCTV
KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope
The Automatic - Not Accepted Anywhere

and that sort of thing.


_{Maybe in the next few months they'll be inundated with heaving binbags of Killers CDs, and various chazzas will have competitions building forts out of them, like Oxfam did with donated copies of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2012.}

[flotemysost]

Went in a charity shop for the first time in ages and found some bloke called Chris[nb]Morris not De Burgh - though he was there as well[/nb] lurking on the cd shelf amongst the mostly usual tat .


Blue Jam cd for £1

Saw the spine, pulled it out and went OH MY GOD  (hopefully muffled by my mask)  & *really quietly* _fuck - never seen it in the wild before.

That's a great find! I was excited enough to nab a copy of Disgusting Bliss in Oxfam years ago.

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

I was thinking of starting a stupid thread a while ago about those certain albums you ALWAYS see in charity shops. On CD, the main ones I seem to notice everywhere are early-mid 2000s hyped-but-somewhat-flash-in-the-pan sort of albums, like

Hard-Fi - Stars of CCTV
KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope
The Automatic - Not Accepted Anywhere

and that sort of thing.


_{Maybe in the next few months they'll be inundated with heaving binbags of Killers CDs, and various chazzas will have competitions building forts out of them, like Oxfam did with donated copies of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2012.}

Every charity shop I go in has a copy or three of Madonna's Music album , can always spot the spine

[jobotic]

nit really a bargain as it's not really worth anything, but just after Stereolab's Transient Random Noise Bursts came out I found a mint copy of this in a charity shop. They look lovely together. Was very pleased with myself.

[The Culture Bunker]

Felt's 'Ballad of the Band' EP for about three or four quid in Didsbury Oxfam was a good buy. Pretty sure I got 'Fiction' by the Comsat Angels for a pound in the Sue Ryder a few doors down that same week too, as well as a fab black coat for a tenner that lasted me about ten years.

[phantom_power]

Today in two separate charity shops, for a quid each, I got:

Frampton Comes Alive
Al Stewart - Year of the Cat
Two Hall & Oates albums
Awesome soul, Motown and Phil Spector compilations
ELO - Out of the Blue
Eno/Ayers/Cale/Nico - June 1974
and a few others

Some of them are probably shit but they are all classics I should give a listen to, and I will be able to trade them in to my local record shop if they do turn out to be big plops

[Brundle-Fly]

At my secondary school you were either a 'chazza' (possibly 'shazza') or a 'grunger'. I was informed upon joining that I must be the latter, on account of wearing trousers rather than a skirt and having a Jansport backpack.

ANYWAY. Got a few decent hauls of CDs for £1 each in the Archway Crisis shop over the years, just rip them straight to my laptop and whack them on my iPod. Sadly I don't have any means to play vinyl but I still enjoy a good browse. The Oxfam bookshop in Crouch End normally has a good selection, I guess even millionaires run out of space or die sometimes.

I was thinking of starting a stupid thread a while ago about those certain albums you ALWAYS see in charity shops. On CD, the main ones I seem to notice everywhere are early-mid 2000s hyped-but-somewhat-flash-in-the-pan sort of albums, like

Hard-Fi - Stars of CCTV
KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope
The Automatic - Not Accepted Anywhere

and that sort of thing.


_{Maybe in the next few months they'll be inundated with heaving binbags of Killers CDs, and various chazzas will have competitions building forts out of them, like Oxfam did with donated copies of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2012.}

We frequent the same chazza shops. I wonder if we've rubbed shoulders? Have you checked out the Oxfam book/music shops in Muswell Hill, Angel & Kentish Town? Get some real gems in there. Mind In Camden up Archway Road oppo Highgate tube is worth a peep too.