- The Observer, Sunday December 12 2004
My name is Craig and I'm a collectaholic. As a music fan, I have acquired a lot of great stuff over the years, whether on cassette, vinyl, CD or the strange Sony soundstick which played Radiohead's Kid A. As a music writer, I have been the lucky recipient of skiploads of ace freebies: fancily-packaged box sets, signed posters, platinum discs (cheers Alicia Keys!), camouflaged jackets (nice one Blur!), and beautifully designed singles clad in denim shorts with condoms in the pocket (thoughtful of you, Lemon Jelly).
Or should I say, I'm a crap-aholic. For the molehill of good taste is dwarfed by the mountain of bad shit. The Madchester 12-inches by the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays are outweighed by releases from the fag-end of the same era, your Intastellas and your Northsides. The methodically collected Franz Ferdinand rarities jostle for alphabetically organised shelf space next to a profusion of CDs by the Frank and Walters. For each miniature music box issued by XL Records to promote Badly Drawn Boy there is a toilet seat cover issued by XL Records to 'promote' the Prodigy's Fat of the Land.
Verily, my cellar runneth over with boxes of seven-inch singles, none of them played for about a decade now. The living room shelves groan with acres of CDs given away with retro music monthlies, still in their gluey Cellophane, retained with the vague notion that one day I will iPod the one track on each that I haven't already got elsewhere. There are ticket stubs for concerts I didn't enjoy(Oasis at Knebworth? Couldn't see a thing, got lost in a field of buses at the end). There are Sun Ra albums I know you're meant to like but, frankly, can't be arsed with.
It's all there, clogging up my house, clogging up my life. What's a delusional-lazy-obsessive to do? Time was, if push came to shove (from your fed-up partner), you'd cart your excess crap down to the charity shop. Or foist it on a mate. Or, if you were feeling really adventurous/middle-aged, take part in a car-boot sell. Or - ulp - bin it.
But now there is eBay. Where Cherie Blair shops, Glastonbury mud was up for grabs, and where last month Martha Reeves faced 'identity theft' after a 1975 TV contract featuring her signature and social security number were offered for sale.
And where someone, someplace, somehow, surely will want my collection of Kula Shaker singles. And then we can ask them: for God's sake, why?
I sign up. My eBay name is tat2treasure, I am new to this selling game, and I am a purveyor of 34 items. Some of it, I think, is highly covetable: a RZA/Bobby Digital 'vinyl killer' - basically, a hip hop-centric toy van that plays records. An official live CD from the very first Pixies reunion show (Minneapolis Fine Line Cafe, 13 April 2004). A U2 military helmet, in a wooden box, complete with U2 straw and an olive green shirt.
Some of it is fairly cool: pre-release cassettes of the first two Oasis singles, for instance. And some of it is, frankly, dire. A Björk 1995 tour laminate, anyone? Pop condoms courtesy of U2? A bunch of singles by Shampoo? Mark Knopfler's new album?
And some of it is, frankly, dire and highly covetable - to me, anyway. I paid good money at a record fair in Perth in 1983 for the Scotland-shaped picture disc of Big Country's classic 'Fields of Fire'. But in the interests of research, I'm willing to part with it. Let bidding commence!
First mistake: instead of ebay.co.uk, I signed up to ebay.com (the American site). This means all bids placed will be in dollars (confusing), and that my lowest starting price is 99c, not 99p. This will also mean lucky Alexandros Vassiliakis in Greece will get the miniaturised, triple-CD Stephen Jones/Babybird retrospective, in the absence of any competing bids, for 45p. Only 44p difference, I know, and Babybird is hardly a hot pop commodity any more. But still.
'I am molecular biologist and I am 27 years old. I bought this CD from you because if I wanted to buy it as new, I should buy it for $28 so it came to me much cheaper. I wanted it only because I liked very much its digipac and not for the music. Of course I know Babybird but I don't have any other release of him. He is not very known in Greece, but his name became more known due to a whisky commercial with a track of his (I think Atomic Soda).'
Second mistake: I happened to be travelling for much of my five-day auction period. I didn't anticipate the avalanche of emails I'd get. Thus I found myself at a painfully slow phone/computer terminal in Hong Kong airport, answering questions about whether the Elbow single had a drawing or a photo on the cover and how much it would be to send the Fatboy Slim mirror in protective packaging to Germany. Music fans on eBay, I was discovering, are a keen bunch, and to enter their world without the smallest details at your fingertips appears a major breach of protocol.
'My name is Kanoa Roman, I am 23 years old and am currently a sixth year senior at San Jose State University in California. I bought the Elbow singles from you because I saw it as a good way to reasonably purchase a few singles/EPs at once. I am a pretty big fan of Elbow, and you're right; I can probably count the number of people I know who have heard of them on one hand (with fingers left over)!'
Three days into the auction, I found myself getting caught up in the excitement. Were 10 people really 'watching' the Mark Knopfler CD? The five watchers of the Britney Spears auction: were they after the single ('My Prerogative') or the 'I [Heart] Britney' badge? Why was no one at all watching the sale of Mike and the Mechanics' 'Silent Running', and why had I bought it in the first place? Was the bidding on the U2 helmet really $405 already? The most-watched item was the Morrissey/David Bowie split single which was released to plug their abortive 1995 tour - were these 22 people Moz or Dame fans?
'My name is Phil Webb. I'm 50, live in North Yorkshire. I work as a bookseller for a chain. I read about the Knopfler album in the paper and went onto the internet to sample some of the tracks. It was but a short step to checking out eBay and I found your advert and another one. I bought both and sent one to my son who is working in London ... I moved to the north-east in the early Seventies to study and found the club scene - working men's clubs, that is. Geordie stuff was all around me and it was out of this that my love and regard for Dire Straits grew. Brothers in Arms as a single and as an album was the best thing around in a what was a pretty good music scene at the time - nothing like the rubbish we get now. Gosh, I sound like my parents' generation, don't I?'
'My name is Zara Robertson and I'm a 20-year-old female training to be a professional dancer at college in Edinburgh! I love Britney and think she rocks and one day my ambition is to be one of her dancers!!) I have bought a few Britney items from eBay, including posters, a purse, badges, other CDs. Best was getting tickets to see her perform in Glasgow, 10 rows from the front for £50! It may sound a bit steep but the concert was AMAZING!!'
'My name is Steve Baurley. I am 47 years old and a Bowie fan of many years!! I live in West Yorkshire and am a director of my own company. E-B gives you access to items not always available readily elsewhere, especially for the music collector, and at a far more realistic price than asked at specialist fairs/shops etc. I have acquired several scarce Bowie items, including your own, and using E-B to do so is much more fun!!'
Finally, with my inbox buckling under the traffic, my auctions ended. I had sold 27 of my 34 items. I had made a stonking £704.57. The items that attracted most interest were the Radiohead merchandise, an UNKLE doll and a limited edition set of Kraftwerk 12-inches (with T-shirt).
'Hi graig [sic]! My name is Luis Arevalo and I'm 27 years old, born in Puerto Rico, living in Miami. I'm a DJ/artist. I am a big UNKLE fan, but mainly I'm a fan of the progressive, multimedia movement, which combines music, art, video, fashion and other elements to create ground-breaking, innovative concepts.'
'My name is Pierre D'Aloisio. I'm in the computer animation field in Toronto. I started collecting Radiohead stuff (primarily CDs) about three or four years ago. I would have to say that probably 80 per cent of my collection comes from eBay. It's almost like an addiction.'
'My name is Adam Cloke. I live in Essex and am a 29-year-old doctor struggling through surgical training in the deeply depressing world of the NHS. Music helps me to sustain some kind of faith in the human spirit. Kraftwerk are an interesting and highly original group, surely as influential as the Beatles. They are one of a very few acts whose work may be considered as a musical primary colour, and much of modern pop music can be interpreted as a mixture of Kraftwerk and James Brown in varying proportions. Discuss.'
I would spend the next few days laboriously packaging and posting a variety of unwieldy items around the world. Fatboy Slim went to Germany. The Mansun back catalogue went to Stockport. A Tasmanian bought the U2 condoms (for 70p), then disappeared. Someone in Florida bought the U2 helmet for lots of money but still hasn't paid. A Frenchman bought the Big Country single but refused to say why. The American winner of the Pixies CD mucked me about so I kept the CD, which suited me fine.
A rabid Norwegian Oasis fan lost out on the 'Shakermaker' and 'Supersonic' cassettes to Steve Godfrey, a 34-year-old civil engineer from Cornwall. He felt £77.69 was a bargain. 'Oasis are one of the most collectable modern bands,' Godfrey said, 'although there has been a slump just lately.'
Keen Prodigy fan Chris Morton, a 21-year-old in York who works for a credit card insurance company, scooped the Prodigy toilet seat cover in the face of stiff competition from Singapore. The only thing he hates about eBay is the type of scammers who offered tickets for the Prodigy's current sold-out tour for £80: 'It ruins it for the true fans who are less well-off.'
And yes, someone paid good money for the Björk laminate, and a bloke in Austria snapped up the single by Goodbye Mr MacKenzie, the obscure Scottish band that Garbage's Shirley Manson used to be in. Like, why?
'My name is Lee Davies, I live in Wolverhampton, and I am a 32-year-old illustrator. I spend much of my day sat in front of a computer and often find myself distractedly browsing for memorabilia by artists that I admire (usually when I ought to be doing something more constructive). The tour laminate attracted my attention because it was unusual and a bargain at a mere few pounds.'
'My name is Roland Schwimmer. I am 32 years old and I am an English teacher in Vienna. I'm not really the biggest Goodbye Mr MacKenzie fan in the world, but I definitely prefer them to Garbage.The most expensive record I've bought on eBay has been the first Falco single called 'That Scene', sung in English after the German version did not get any airplay because of its allusions to the Vienna drug scene. The final price for this item was £50 and I won by just 1p. The other bidder thought himself to be clever and waited with his bid until eight seconds before the end of auction and obviously did not have the time to place another bid when he saw that he was still outbid. In the meantime I was having lunch with my family and did not check the final outcome of the auction before evening.'
What I learnt:
The bottom has fallen out of the art rock market: the Franz Ferdinand 'official bootleg' album I bought on eBay in March for £25 attracted a top bid of £2.50. No one likes drum'n'bass any more. Or at least, no one likes Alex Reese T-shirts. eBayers are really, really into eBay; it's like a cult. And they're obsessed with getting positive feedback.
Did I mention that I have a feedback score of 21 and a 100 per cent positive feedback rating?
Kraftwerk fans are mental. There isn't much call for Huey Lewis and the News singles. Or for Kula Shaker. That said, people will, more or less, buy anything.
My cellar is still full of crap.
