How can I maximise music sales for Oxfam?

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I'be just started helping out my local Oxfam down the Cowley Road in Oxford, and my first job was helping a mate price up and sort out the stacks of vinyl above the shop, ready for selling.

After going through them, we realised that most of them are £.99 - £1.99 jobbies, but there were some that the Rare Price Guide book says are worth £20-30.

Now, I'm guessing that if I put these records out for £30 in Oxfam, they wouldn't get bought. So how can I maximese these sales? EBay? Or are there mechanisms in place that can help me out?

― Johnney B, Saturday, 3 April 2004 17:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I work at the Oxfam Music in Glasgow, and we generally put the valuable things on EBay (or at least the things we think won't get a decent price in the shop). It can be a bit variable, and the price guide in the book is not always going 2 result in a big sale, but U can end up selling things 4 vastly more than U will in store.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Saturday, 3 April 2004 17:49 (twenty-one years ago)

omg

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 3 April 2004 18:17 (twenty-one years ago)

oh, and there is some sort of Oxfam HTML that U can use 4 selling things on Ebay. see here 4 what we sell

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Saturday, 3 April 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I, once, bought don henley's 'boys of summer' (b/w 'month of sundays') and clive dunn's 'grandad' (b/w 'I play the spoons'), from oxfam.

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 3 April 2004 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Ah, nice one Robbie. Just there's lots of Jefferson Airplane and ROlling Stones which I might be able to ebay. I'll suggest it to the rest of the team next week.

― Johnney B, Sunday, 4 April 2004 09:43 (twenty-one years ago)

good for you, Johnney B - I may pop in and have a browse.

I was talking to my cousin at the weekend. He trains the staff who work in the shops of a major children's charity. He was saying that the charity shop market is changing (e.g. hardly anyone buys clothes from them anymore) and there is apparently a real case for specialist charity shops. I wonder how well a charity record shop would work?

― MarkH (MarkH), Sunday, 4 April 2004 12:39 (twenty-one years ago)

That's a good point Mark, and although the music section in Cowley Road is rather pitiful, we're having a refit later in the year and having all of upstairs to use for music. When that gets going, I'm kinda hoping for proper music store. Not only do I get some good karma from Oxfam, I also get to live my dream of having loads of High Fidelity-esque conversations! In a music shop! And I get to pick the tunes! Yay!

Pop in at some point - you can pick up some cheap classical if that's your bag, and the odd random 80s album as well. As I say, small but interesting.

― Johnney B, Sunday, 4 April 2004 12:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Robbie Lumsden? The Pullitzer prize winner for Poetry?

― jed_ (jed), Sunday, 4 April 2004 15:55 (twenty-one years ago)

no.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:03 (twenty-one years ago)

I manage the Oxfam Bookshop in Dublin, and I found when I took it over that there could be huge resistance among some people to paying collector prices in an Oxfam shop. It's because they're not used to it. You just have to hang on in there, be prepared to take a bit of verbiage from some people who tell you that you have a nerve to be selling things for that price when you got them for free, and try to get yourself some local press and radio. Many local radio stations are just gagging for a nice bit of good news, so if you send them emails to let them know you've got these records, you never know what will happen.

Eventually the word will get around that you have them, and the serious collectors will wander in.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, I'm more a long dead American Poet, jed. I can't even remember if i won the pulitzer.

There are some Oxfam Record shops in britain (there are ones in Glasgow and Edinburgh, for sure) and Cancer Research have opened one in Glasgow too.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Have they? Where's the Cancer Research one, Robbie?

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I think the Cancer Research one is on Sauchiehall Street. near *Jumping Jacks*. I haven't been yet; the word at Oxfam Music was that they had spandau ballet in the window.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:37 (twenty-one years ago)

there are no Cs in jumping jak's, as hard as it may be to believe.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Where is the Oxfam Music shop in Glasgow?

― Andy Jay, Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

I thought that perhaps it was spelt funnily. I briefly considered Jumpin' Jax.

Tangentially: does Glasgow having a Jumping Jaks prove that it's a provincial town?

(Andy Jay: the Oxfam Music is on Byres Rd. just after highburgh road (if yr going 2wards partick). there's also quite a good Oxfam on Victoria Rd. that only sells music and records)

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe it's jumpin' jak's.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:47 (twenty-one years ago)

charlie reed, so naive.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:47 (twenty-one years ago)

charlie reid, so naive, more accurately.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:47 (twenty-one years ago)

No G's, No C's

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:49 (twenty-one years ago)

no 's, either.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:51 (twenty-one years ago)

take a look at the list of Jumpin' Jaks (sic) venues. christ! i though Glasgow was an exciting and cosmopolitan. It isn't: that's what JJ's means.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

at last, a concrete connection, between glasgow and stevenage.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Basildon...East Grinstead...Hemel Hempstead...Dumfries...Glasgow?

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Sunday, 4 April 2004 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

It is a blight on Sauchiehall St. Most things there are, mind you.

― N. (nickdastoor), Sunday, 4 April 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

There is a fake Jumpin Jaks in Maryhill too, which is a bit scary. I've never been in.

I work in the Byres Road Oxfam Music too, but I don't know anything about maximising sales. I mainly just sit at the till eating other people's biscuits and making models out of blu-tac.

― Cathy (Cathy), Monday, 5 April 2004 09:51 (twenty-one years ago)

cathy - (and I don't want this 2 be taken as innuendo by any dirty minded glaswegians) but did U see Christine's pie? (alright U can't but help in seeing the innuendo in that). It was made of blu-tac - perhaps a masterpiece of Blu-tac art

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Monday, 5 April 2004 11:37 (twenty-one years ago)

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