My Post Office Is Getting Weird

I'm shipping directly.  

I appreciate how challenging things are for the postal clerks right now, but according to the info on their own website my local p.o. is wrong.  I'm basically being told to talk to the hand.  I don't want to be a dick about it, but I'm wondering if I should try to get clarification from someone further up the chain.

I'm selling thru Discogs, and haven't tried selling on eBay yet.  Thanks for the advice though, I'll check that out.   
 

While I am having my eyes opened to the possibilities of online vending, this is just one of several headaches it brings, and is really making me miss just being open for the public and hand to hand transactions.

Thanks John.  I suppose these are just really first world problems, and that this too shall pass.  
 

I own a physical record store that I have operated for the last 15 years, Joe.  I've been able to make a go of it until now by only selling in my store, so I have not had a website, nor particularly needed or wanted one.  I prefer to focus my energy on working with the store stock.  If I was going to just sell online, I would look for a less expensive space.  I am currently using Discogs to broker my records, which means they take 8% of my sales, and also means I am spending a lot of time I didn't used to listing items, packaging shipments, going to the post office and fielding inquiries.  

As far as what I'm selling, it's whatever I'm choosing to list.  I started with some of my priciest pieces, the stuff on our walls, which generated some fast revenue.  Now, I'm almost done listing what would normally be our "new arrivals", my most recently processed stock.  I sell primarily vintage, used records, so this means records I have cleaned, done repair work to covers and 9 times out of 10 play-tested before grading and pricing them.  Once I've done this round of prepped new arrivals, I will work on listing our old stock while building up the next 800 or so new arrivals.  I sell other music media (cds, cassettes, 8-tracks, reel-to-reels) and other vinyl formats too (7", 10"), as well as movie media (Blu-Rays, DVDs, VHS, Laserdiscs) and music and film related books,  and have literally hundreds of thousands of items to vend.

Most of my stock comes through the door from people selling or trading directly with me.  I have acquired enough stock that I could probably go 3-4 years at this point with no new stock coming in and still have good quality new stock to add.  That said, I do still like to check out the thrift stores and cut-rate media dealers like Half Price Books to see what I can score.  Part of it's just therapeutic, to get me out of my store, part of it's just a flashback to when I was a kid just getting into it and looking for deals, and part of it is surely just a bit of ocd tendencies that comes with collecting.  I have also heard great stories about choice finds from yard sales and estate sales, but as they are on weekends, I've never pursued that angle as that is usually go time in my store.  Storage unit auctions are also another place I would source if I wasn't already sitting on four rooms of records awaiting processing.  I generally don't shop the other record stores in my hometown, but usually do when I travel.  It's always interesting to see what is being valued or devalued in other markets. 

I just sold an original stereo 3 LP box set on the Mercury Label of Bach Cello Suites performed by Janos Starker for $600, so that leaves a White Label Promo of Neil Young's "After The Gold Rush" for $250 as the priciest LP.  

The priciest item I have now is a 7" single with a picture sleeve for the Yardbirds "I Wish You Would".   It was a promotional item given away at department stores with the purchase of a pair of socks.  It was their first single and has a picture of the group on the front, and an advertisement for the socks on the back.  It is also an error pressing as the cover misstates the title as "I Wish You Could" while the record label correctly lists it as "I Wish You Would".  I'm pretty sure it is the first record Eric Clapton ever appeared on, although I've never confirmed this.  It is very rare, with estimates of 500-1000 being produced as the Yardbirds were a new band and relatively unknown at that point.  I'm asking $600 for it.  I haven't listed that one on line though.

I also have a very rare 1st pressing of the Ventures 7" of "Walk Don't Run" originally produced in in a run of 200 copies for a local Seattle private press.  I set it aside a few years ago to do some research on a name written on one of the labels, and it got lost in the haystacks.  I'm pretty sure I've got it, but haven't been able to find it.  It's worth about $1200.