Expert: Skeeter - 7/12/2008

Question
QUESTION: I have a copy of Chicago, If you leave me now. The jacket and labels are normal. Side two plays as labeled, side one when played starts with a Willie Nelson song. and the rest of side one has various other country artists. How rare is it, and what is it worth? I took it to a local record dealer, he had never seen this type or error.

ANSWER:    I thought I sent you a rather elaborate answer to your question, but it did not seem to go through.  Please let me know if you got my answer.


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QUESTION: i did not receive an answer

Answer
  I don't show anything about that album other than the one release of it in my price guides.
  As far as I know Chicago isn't a real collectable band,  but you never know what something is worth until you try to sell it.
  It is my personal opinion that Ebay has changed the value of things like vinyl.   I think for the most part it has made collectables cheaper because it has made them more widely available.

 You might try finding out what the album is that was misprinted on it.
 See if you can determine the names of some of the country songs and try to find if that is some kind of country hits album,  the defect might be listed under the country album.  

  I can't really give you any idea because the way I find out what things are worth is to check ebay.   Because what they are really worth boils down to what people are willing to pay for them.  

  Years ago I bought and sold at a place called Colleens Collectables.  You might try contacting them,  the dude in the shop had a good idea of what rare albums were worth.   


http://www.colleenscollectables.com/index.php

 In general though, it is my opinion that rare vinyl is not as valuable as it was some years back,  both because of Ebay and because I don't think vinyl collecting is as big as it use to be.  
 I think that CDs took the wind out of rare vinyls sails,  because one reason collectors  gathered up rare stuff was simply because they wanted the music on the album.  Now , with a lot of what was once out of pring vinyl now on CD,  I suspect many collectors lost reason to collect ( which is my situation).


 This is just my opinion,  I really am not collecting anymore and haven't kept up with it.  It is just my conjecture.  
 Your best bet is to call Colleens ( I think her husband is Gus,  he did the buying when I was doing business there).   

 One other thing,  you might also try to do some research on it on the web by doing yahoo or google searches using the catalog number along with the albums name.
  That number appears most often on the albums label,  it is normally right below the side indicator (side 1 or side "A").
  If it has two numbers, one below the other in parathesis,  that normally means the album had a second release.   If I remember right the first number is the pressing of that particular album, the parenthesis number is  the original release number.  

 I hope this helps you.  I was never an expert on collecting and I tend to mistrust any price guides as anything more than just a general idea of an albums rarity.   Because again, what it is really worth is what you can sell it for, not what a book says  it is worth.