High price of old metal

Where would be without eBay? Well, a whole lot richer that's for sure. Now the name of this blog is the Heavy Metal Time Machine, but you know eBay is a bit of a time machine as well. Any stuff from your past that you had and lost or remember from your past can now become yours for a price and sometimes it is some price. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I didn't have a lot of money to spend on albums when I was in high school, but I did my share of looking. I remember spending a great deal of time looking, no sometimes it was actually staring at album covers as if I had some x-ray vision that could allow me to see the quality of the music just by gazing non-stop at the cover art. If I had a nickel for every minute of my life that I spent staring at the cover of an Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath or Motorhead album then I would be rich enough to buy some of these metal albums going on eBay. Now I will admit right away that I have not paid an enormous price for any album or cd on eBay. About the most I have ever paid for an album on eBay was may $5.00 and maybe $15. 00 for a cd, but I do browse to see what is out there. Now generally rare metal albums don't fetch as great a price as rare cd's, but I have seen some go for high prices. I saw a Warren DeMartini solo album on cd (Japanese only release) go for up around $90.00 a few years ago. If Warren owned a box of those then he could just sell them on eBay and make more than he made from touring with Ratt over the last six years. Just this week I saw a cd of Laaz Rockit's second album for sale. Now I have it on lp, but I was curious to see if I could find any of their stuff on cd. Apparently most of their albums were released on cd and are now out of print. Now I got into Laaz Rockit early on and they were on a major by their third release, but they were never that well known. Still that copy of No Stranger to danger went for over $80.00 and had over ten bids. I guess the whole thing is that people who were teens back then (like me) couldn't afford everything they wanted. Now we have jobs and we have some money so I guess a lot of old metal fans are going back and sometimes paying a high price for a piece of the past. A few years ago I was searching through eBay and looking for an album by an old band and I found someone selling a cd for this band. Now the two albums I knew of where not released on cd, but upon reading the description I discovered this was a release of a third album that was recorded ten years earlier. I was interested and the price was cheap so I bid and won. When I got the sellers information, I quickly realized he had been the drummer for this band. I won't mention the name of the band because I am not passing any judgement and you probably wouldn't know who they were even if I said there name. However this did make me wander if any of these old metal guys were selling fliers, bootlegs and other stuff from their old band on Ebay. My guess would be that this was going on more than I thought. Is this wrong? Well it's not wrong, but it is a bit sad at least to me. At least I have not seen any of Blackie Lawless's animal print cod pieces or Lemmy's mole for sale so eBay isn't exactly like a big heavy metal flea market.
You can occasionaly find some bargains on Ebay and I believe if you wait long enough you will find what you are looking for and maybe even for a fair price. I was looking for an album called Cyclone- Brutal Destruction (who?). It's a real speed metal gem from an obscure 80's band, but I looked and looked for this on lp as it was never released on cd. It oftentimes went for over $10.00 for a used album and that was too rich for my blood. Then finally I must have hit it at the right time because I got one in great shape for $4.00. Another thing to remember is that items can be re-issued. A friend of mine told me about someone he knew paying $40.00 for a cd on Ebay a few years back. Then I saw where it was re-released with another album on a cd where it was $15.00 for both cd's new. I almost bid on copy of Malice's second lp a year or so ago, but I gave up when it got over $10.00. Now it has been released on cd with bonus tracks for $12.99 at most places. Overall Ebay sometimes offers some options to those of us who are searching for albums we want back or albums we never got to hear. If you have the money and the time then you can probably find what you are looking for. So good luck and happy bidding!