don’t ignore that hodgepodge lot of elvis records on ebay

SPOILER ALERT for record col­lec­tors! I am about to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion that could for­ever change the way you look at col­lec­table records. And if you wheel and deal in old records, it might af­fect the way that you buy and sell those records. At least, it might change the way that you look at ads of­fering Elvis Gold Stan­dard sin­gles for sale, which seem to be a per­ma­nent part of the internet.

RCA Vic­tor’s Gold Stan­dard Se­ries of reis­sues has been around for al­most sixty years and has been reis­suing Elvis sin­gles since 1958. Many record dealers dis­miss all reis­sues as being of no in­terest to most col­lec­tors and there­fore of little value. Con­se­quently, they ig­nore Elvis Gold Stan­dards. If they pay any at­ten­tion to these records, it’s the older ones with the glossy black la­bels from the 1950s and early ’60s, not the newer ones with or­ange and red la­bels from the late ’60s on.

Big mis­take!

If you’re an Elvis col­lector and aren’t col­lecting Gold Stan­dards, you’re missing out on some fun!

Ex­actly how many Elvis col­lec­tors around the world are pur­suing the Gold Stan­dard Se­ries is un­known. But I do know that there are enough col­lec­tors to main­tain a healthy market for all of them and a rav­enous market for some of them.

And I know two other things:

1.  If you are an Elvis col­lector and aren’t paying at­ten­tion to the Gold Stan­dard Se­ries, you are missing out on some fun parts of col­lecting Elvis!

2.  If you are a dealer and aren’t paying at­ten­tion to the Gold Stan­dard Se­ries, you are missing out on sales to some rather rabid Elvis collectors!

The title given this photo on Pin­terest is “Elvis Presley Vin­tage Lot 21 Jukebox Records 45 RPM 1 Pic­ture Sleeve.” In record col­lecting, claiming a record is a “jukebox record” can be con­fusing as it can (and should) mean a record man­u­fac­tured specif­i­cally for use in juke­boxes, of which there were very few. But it is often used to refer to stock copies of records be­lieved to have been used in juke­boxes, as this title implies.

Vintage lot of jukebox records

Take a look at the photo that I used as the fea­tured image for this ar­ticle: I pulled it off the in­ternet from Pin­terest. The title given it on Pin­terest is “Elvis Presley Vin­tage Lot 21 Jukebox Records 45 RPM 1 Pic­ture Sleeve,” which sounds like the title it would have had as an eBay auction.

It fea­tures twenty Gold Stan­dard 45s, eigh­teen with the red la­bels that were used from 1969-1976 and two with the black la­bels used since 1976. There are four RCA Victor com­pany sleeves with one Atco and one Goldies 45 sleeve. (There is also a pic­ture sleeve peeking through the spindle hole of the first record in the third row from the top.)

In other words, this is a hodge­podge lot and would prob­ably not at­tract the at­ten­tion of many buyers. Yet photos like this ac­com­pany ads on eBay all the time, often with records that are graded “like new” and “never played.” These records often fea­ture rel­a­tively low (ac­tu­ally, ridicu­lously low is prob­ably more ac­cu­rate) asking prices.

And lots like this sell fast!

Why?

Be­cause the red label Gold Stan­dards are hot items with many Presley col­lec­tors and many of those red label records are very hard to find.

RCA Victor 447-0631, I Feel So Bad / Wild In The Country, is an odd duck, being a rather rare record is­sued among sev­eral rather common num­bers in the Gold Stan­dard Se­ries: 447-0629, Are You Lone­some Tonight? / I Gotta Know; 447-0630, Sur­render / Lonely Man; 447-0634, Little Sister / (Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame; and 447-0635, Can’t Help Falling In Love / Rock-A-Hula Baby. The odd duck can sell for $100 in near mint con­di­tion whereas the others sell for $10-20.

It’s a long lonely highway

So, you don’t be­lieve that those early ’70s reis­sues sell for much? Here are two red label Gold Stan­dard 45s that sold for more than $100 each on eBay in the past two weeks:

•  In one in­stance, a lot of four records sold for $119.50, ex­cept the en­tire amount was paid for to ac­quire just one of the four records: 447-0631, I Feel So Bad / Wild In The Country. How do I know this? Be­cause the buyer told me so!

•  In the second in­stance, one of the rarest red la­bels (447-0654, I’m Yours / (It’s A) Long Lonely Highway) sold for $141.50.

And that’s nothing com­pared to what the rarest black and or­ange label Gold Stan­dards are fetching! But that’s an­other story and an­other reason you should stay tuned to the se­ries of ar­ti­cles on the Elvis Gold Stan­dard se­ries 45s and EPs that will be ap­pearing here on my blog …

If you are a dealer and aren’t paying at­ten­tion to the Gold Stan­dard Se­ries, you are missing out on sales to some rather rabid Elvis col­lec­tors! Click To Tweet

FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page was found on Pin­terest, where it ap­pears to have been pulled from an eBay ad­ver­tise­ment. I cropped it so that it has more im­pact, hope­fully, to pull in a reader or two. The records in the fea­tured image is the kind of ad that would ap­pear on eBay and sell for $50 for the lot of them. The av­erage buyer would look at this sale and the low price would only serve to con­firm to him that red la­bels are only worth a few bucks. But the person who bought the lot would prob­ably turn around and sell them for $10-30 each!

POSTSCRIPTUALLY, this ar­ticle is a teaser for a se­ries of ar­ti­cles on the Elvis Gold Stan­dard sin­gles and EPs. There will be at least ten ar­ti­cles (in­cluding a price guide for hun­dreds of records) for this as yet un­named series.