As a follow-up on my blog post about “Kogan madness“:
Yeah, yeah, I know : Janos Starker WAS one of the greatest cellists of the second half of the 20th century, worthy of unrestricted admiration and collecting. And I know: his penultimate (out of five) recording of the Cello Suites, from 1984, on the small (and long gone) Canadian label Sefel is a rarity.
But an ask price of 1,000 dollars for the two CDs ?
Hey, that’s madness!
I don’t want to lay too much blame on the seller, Ieronim (based in Romania). I’ve bought from him in the past, a couple of times (never at those prices!), and he’s often got good and rare stuff – incredible what finds its way to Romania, not usually recognized as the center of the world of Classical music. I do think it is crazy to expect to find someone ready to shell out one thousand bucks on 2 CDs, but if he does – madness is the buyer’s and the blame goes on him!
Anyway, I’ll put the offer on my watchlist, to know if buyer’s madness manifests itself. So far, Ieronim’s 1,000 dollars is not the market value of the Sefel recording. It’s market value will be determined when the offer meets a demand. Discogs.com, which functions as both an encyclopedia of recordings and a marketplace, indicates that the most expensive CD1 sold from their platform is 55 euros – still expensive for a CD, but way more reasonable (in fact, I was almost tempted to spend 40 on only one CD of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas by Patrick Bismuth on Stil, one of those rarities I’m hopelessly hoping to find for around 20… and then balked).
By the way, I’ve just checked the other eBay offer I had mentioned at the end my “Kogan madness” post, of only one of the two Sefel CDs, by a Texas-based seller alliased Gnarly-Media. His start price was 360 dollars back then.
Well, it turns out the “listing was ended by the seller because the item is no longer available”. From that I understand that he withdrew it because it didn’t sell – no wonder.
But what I find particularly, well, interesting, is that apparently, when the guy got no bids at 360 dollars, he relisted his CD as “buy it now”…. and at an offer price of… 1078 dollars! Why 1078, rather than, I don’t know, 1,000, or 1,077? No clue.
Anyway, it strikes me as a real revolution in micro-economics: when your goods don’t sell, triple the price!
As they say: as long as you haven’t sold, you ain’t rich.
PS from 2 October 2021: see my follow-up, and learn the REAL market value of these two CDs