Toronto Weird Boys

I don't know if I lucked out, or this is just what they do, but I finally got around to shopping at Bay Bloor Radio for a turntable and preamp, and the sales guy just starting throwing discounts at me on both. Like $70 off the TT right off the bar for being his first customer of the day and making his sale super easy by knowing exactly what I wanted, and another discount on the preamp. Wish he discounted cables but I can just get them elsewhere (and did). Overall enjoyable experience.

Edit: I just price checked the preamp and he dropped it by another $70!!
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
Haven't taken stuff to Rotate since before COVID but seemed fair at the time. Sonic has been consistently about 35-40% of Discogs median that last few times I took in stuff. Don't bother with Kops.
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Don't bother with Kops is my new mantra. I used to be okay with them when their prices seemed reasonable but the more I shop there the more I realize that place just caters to people whose vinyl experience is buying the latest Taylor Swift album to add to their collection of other Taylor albums.
 
bdrummond said:
I don't know if I lucked out, or this is just what they do, but I finally got around to shopping at Bay Bloor Radio for a turntable and preamp, and the sales guy just starting throwing discounts at me on both. Like $70 off the TT right off the bar for being his first customer of the day and making his sale super easy by knowing exactly what I wanted, and another discount on the preamp. Wish he discounted cables but I can just get them elsewhere (and did). Overall enjoyable experience.

Edit: I just price checked the preamp and he dropped it by another $70!!
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This is good on their part but yes also pretty standard there.. The listed prices tend to be a bit higher than most places so they're able to come down on most things. You can definitely barter there to a degree so I'm glad they did that for you without you asking. Honestly you can bargain at most of the high end stereo stores around the city, in most cases I just start with the phase "what's the best price you can give me" and they usually knock 10 - 15% off right off the hop. Same thing for watches at the big stores, Royal De Versailles etc... although with those you can go even higher in the 25% discount range right off the hop.
 
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Mather said:
This is good on their part but yes also pretty standard there.. The listed prices tend to be a bit higher than most places so they're able to come down on most things. You can definitely barter there to a degree so I'm glad they did that for you without you asking. Honestly you can bargain at most of the high end stereo stores around the city, in most cases I just start with the phase "what's the best price you can give me" and they usually knock 10 - 15% off right off the hop. Same thing for watches at the big stores, Royal De Versailles etc... although with those you can go even higher in the 25% discount range right off the hop.
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I found the carbon Evo reasonably priced to everywhere that didn't offer refurb. Think the preamp was like ten bucks cheaper elsewhere. Definitely nice to knock some off.
 
Toronto adjacent question.

Going to Hamilton in a couple of weeks and staying downtown near James St. Any good record stores in the neighborhood, or any worth driving too?
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
Toronto adjacent question.

Going to Hamilton in a couple of weeks and staying downtown near James St. Any good record stores in the neighborhood, or any worth driving too?
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There are two stores in the downtown area, Into the Abyss and Dr. Disc, I like both, mostly new stuff with a small section of used.

For driving, Revolution Records is on Ottawa street, they are new with a used section, Ottawa street has a couple of used spots that last time I went in the prices were all over the place!
 
Hit Into the Abyss and Dr Disc and picked up stuff at both.

Dr Disc is mostly new. I grabbed the new Shellac there. Prices are a bit all over the place but the Shellac was $31 so I was happy with that.

Into the Abyss is a mix of new and used, but nothing amazing in either category. Went through their used bins and grabbed a couple of things so pretty happy overall. Also no AC and it was bloody humid in The Hammer today so browsing for too long was not in the cards.
 
juiceless said:
Weirdos, where's the best place to sell in Toronto these days? Gotta slim down my collection,
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Hey man! I've sold at Rotate and Sonic recently and both were decent. Rotate doesn't really want expensive stuff so pricier stuff is better at Sonic. But Sonic is dependant on WHO is actually doing the pricing. Some of the people there are cheap AF. I generally go through and price everything at half of discogs median value, then if they get within a reasonable distance of that, I agree. It's worked so far at both places. Sonic claims to do half of Cogs but they will be overly conservative with grading and claim everything is VG+. You can barter a bit with them to get stuff raised depending who it is.
 
Mather said:
Hey man! I've sold at Rotate and Sonic recently and both were decent. Rotate doesn't really want expensive stuff so pricier stuff is better at Sonic. But Sonic is dependant on WHO is actually doing the pricing. Some of the people there are cheap AF. I generally go through and price everything at half of discogs median value, then if they get within a reasonable distance of that, I agree. It's worked so far at both places. Sonic claims to do half of Cogs but they will be overly conservative with grading and claim everything is VG+. You can barter a bit with them to get stuff raised depending who it is.
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Hey man! Thanks for this. Any expensive stuff is going to go through discogs, but I want to drop some medium value stuff. This is good info.
 
juiceless said:
Oh shit I still have to do this. Looking forward to hearing how it went.
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Here's the list for reference. Note: the Black Star is the instrumentals and comes up with the same sku as the regular version but I couldn't be fucked to correct it in my discogs collection.

I'm guessing maybe in the $100-200 range which sucks, but need that space and I'm never going to listen to these ever again.


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All in - $230.

Pretty meh price per record, but there are definitely some lower quality items that dragged the average down. I'll be surprised if they gave me more than $2 for that King of Rock single. That Sarah Webster Fabio I probably paid to take off my hands too.

I'd be really curious as to how much they valued the Kamasi Washington at: bought for like $74 and checking discogs there was no chance of getting even like half that.
 
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bdrummond said:
All in - $230.

Pretty meh price per record, but there are definitely some lower quality items that dragged the average down. I'll be surprised if they gave me more than $2 for that King of Rock single. That Sarah Webster Fabio I probably paid to take off my hands too.

I'd be really curious as to how much they valued the Kamasi Washington at: bought for like $74 and checking discogs there was no chance of getting even like half that.
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Who was doing the appraisal at Sonic? It varies a lot per person there. Did you add up the median cogs price per record? How close did they get to that?
 
Mather said:
Who was doing the appraisal at Sonic? It varies a lot per person there. Did you add up the median cogs price per record? How close did they get to that?
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I don't know the name. Some youngish kid with bushy hair.

Didn't give a breakdown, but it was what I was willing to accept to clear some record space
I DID manage to take one album back though, and it was the Noga Erez.

To you point on this one however is where it gets a bit disappointing:
That knocked $11 off the price they were going to give me.

The discogs LOWEST was $22.
So that means, they were offering a long shot from the median.

Again, the goal was to clear them as quickly as possible, but yeah I can't say I'm jacked given the sample.
 
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