OJC Pressings and their place on the market

[six string]

Ten years ago I used to pass the OJCs up when buying records with the idea that I would find earlier pressings, possibly first pressings in the racks. I've never been one to collect multiple copies of an album, so instead of buying the first copy I saw, i.e. an OJC sometimes, I would hold off until an earlier pressing crossed my path. With the rising cost of those originals and their scarcity, I am looking at OJCs from a different perspective. For the most part, I'm finding used copies in near mint condition for $6.00 to $10.00. The sound of these lps is quite acceptable and if I really want the title on vinyl instead of cd, I'm no longer hesitating on purchasing these editions.

It got me to wondering if we'll start to see the prices go up on the OJCs as the originals become more expensive and harder to find. Now that they aren't being pressed, there's a finite number available and a lot of the titles I've been buying don't have much of a chance of being released by the current crop of reissue companies.

Thoughts?

[BillF]

In a thread which I started called "Record Prices for Records", I said that I was noticing an escalating rise in the price being asked for used copies of OJCs which were no longer available. £30 ($60) is not unusual for these on amazon.uk.

[six string]

Wow! I've not seen anything like that here in Northern California. I don't shop in San Francisco and Berkeley like I used to, so I don't know what's going on there, but I feel pretty confident to say it's not as bad as what you're seeing. If the sound of those lps was poor, I wouldn't be buying them for the most part, but they do sound good. It's only when you compare them to the originals that they don't always stack up. If you never hear the original, you'll never know.

I'm not doing any panic buying and I'm not trying to start such, but I do know that I'm no longer sticking my nose up at these pressings.

[JohnS]

I've sold a few on ebay in the UK and Europe, if I get the equivalent of $5 I think I've done well. On the other hand the pressings are nice and imo OJC vinyl issues are well worth picking up.

[Dan Gould]

I wonder if prices in the UK reflect fewer copies being shipped/sold. Of course eventually OJC prices can be expected to increase as time passes but I can't imagine a reason to pay more than $10 for a copy right now.

[BillF]

You seemed so surprised by what I said that I've been to the amazon.uk site and used Jimmy Heath CDs for a random check on prices. Here are the most expensive OJC Heath CDs. Nearly all are used and almost all offered by U.S. firms that specialize in shipping to the U.K. The few U.K. firms included here are asking the same sort of price.

On the Trail 1 copy available at £54.58

Swamp Seed 7 copies available from £39.47 to £63.46

Triple Threat 4 copies available from £23.73 to £25.99

Of course, another factor here is the relative expensiveness of U.K. retail prices compared to their U.S. equivalents. You can get $40 for £20 in currency exchange, but are likely to find that a £20 item in a British store costs $20 in a U.S.store, which is why wealthy Brits fly over to New York for the weekend and load up on shopping! (P.S. I am not among their fortunate number!)

[sidewinder]

I don't think I've paid more than £5 for any of them - and that includes 'Limited Edition' titles. The sound is usually very acceptable indeed. The mid-70s 74000 series RCA Prestige/Milestone/Fantasy twofers can sound even better, IMO (apart from the ones pressed in France - not sure why that is).

Edited March 15, 2008 by sidewinder

[RDK]

You seemed so surprised by what I said that I've been to the amazon.uk site and used Jimmy Heath CDs for a random check on prices. Here are the most expensive OJC Heath CDs. Nearly all are used and almost all offered by U.S. firms that specialize in shipping to the U.K. The few U.K. firms included here are asking the same sort of price.

On the Trail 1 copy available at £54.58

Swamp Seed 7 copies available from £39.47 to £63.46

Triple Threat 4 copies available from £23.73 to £25.99

Of course, another factor here is the relative expensiveness of U.K. retail prices compared to their U.S. equivalents. You can get $40 for £20 in currency exchange, but are likely to find that a £20 item in a British store costs $20 in a U.S.store, which is why wealthy Brits fly over to New York for the weekend and load up on shopping! (P.S. I am not among their fortunate number!)

I think the OP was talking about OJC vinyl not CDs. Yes, some of the CDs are getting scarce and prices are soaring, but the vinyl, at least out here, seems stagnant. They may not be easily found simply because so few stores carry them, but they're still reasonably priced.

[BillF]

Yes, there was a bit of misunderstanding here. I didn't realise at first that the thread was originally limited to discussion of vinyl only. But what has been said seems accurate and useful.

[Clunky]

The mid-70s 74000 series RCA Prestige/Milestone/Fantasy twofers can sound even better, IMO (apart from the ones pressed in France - not sure why that is).

I have found the French LPs in this series to sound great. Better than OJC in several cases.

On the whole however, I've found the OJC vinyls to be uniformly excellent, even the Ace UK ones which state that they're digital mastered !! Whilst I generally avoid these I found they held up very well against equivalent Esquire/ original Prestige issues. I don't pay over £6 per OJC. Pressings always seem dead quite.

[sidewinder]

I have found the French LPs in this series to sound great. Better than OJC in several cases.

Hmm - not my experience at all. The ones I have (Carrere) sound very 'thin', to say the least.

[Clunky]

I have found the French LPs in this series to sound great. Better than OJC in several cases.

Hmm - not my experience at all. The ones I have (Carrere) sound very 'thin', to say the least.

ahh...I'm talking about Musidisc editions ( earlier?), the few Carrere LPs ( mostly OJC copies) I have are very variable. Lush Life is very good and meets the Esquire version head on , where as Art Peppers Modern Jazz Classics sounds like mud- very poor indeed compared to a Vogue mono of the same session.

[sidewinder]

I have found the French LPs in this series to sound great. Better than OJC in several cases.

Hmm - not my experience at all. The ones I have (Carrere) sound very 'thin', to say the least.

ahh...I'm talking about Musidisc editions ( earlier?), the few Carrere LPs ( mostly OJC copies) I have are very variable. Lush Life is very good and meets the Esquire version head on , where as Art Peppers Modern Jazz Classics sounds like mud- very poor indeed compared to a Vogue mono of the same session.

Don't know about the Musidisc editions (from the 60s?). Sometimes though (and not often) the Carrere's (from the mid to late 70s) can throw a total wobbly and sound fantastic. I have a Clarke/Boland Big Band French MPS LP that comes in that category.

Now where's Brownie when you need him for some comments on French Prestige?

[clifford_thornton]

Musidisc/America, from the late '60s and early '70s, sound pretty good - at least the ones I have. Come to think of it, those are mostly Debut/Fantasy titles.

The Carrere Prestige vinyls I was unimpressed by and replaced with OJCs or CDs.

[sidewinder]

The Carrere Prestige vinyls I was unimpressed by and replaced with OJCs or CDs.

Yes, 'flat and thin' is how I would describe the sound on them. Always seem to have to crank up the volume just to get reasonable playback. The 'Americas' are much better. A 70s oil-crisis thing?

[six string]

Yes, there was a bit of misunderstanding here. I didn't realise at first that the thread was originally limited to discussion of vinyl only. But what has been said seems accurate and useful.

Sorry for the confusion. I did indeed mean vinyl and not cds, which is why I posted it in the vinyl section. I should have been more clear.

[Big Beat Steve]

Reading this, I guess I will have to do a bit of aural comparison later on.

In the 80s we got a lot of German pressings of those Prestige/Fantasy/OJC facsimile LP reissues (Mikulski or ZYX or others; distributors' addresses given at the bottom of the back cover).

Didn't notice any significant difference in general sound quality vs. the U.S. OJC pressings.

I have a few Carreres among them too; don't remember if they overall sound thinner.

All in all I always found the OJC reissues very good value for money - just like the slightly earlier "not yet OJC" reissues of Prestige LPs. Their prices do not seem to have inflated unduly around here (to the extent that vinyl is still carried by the (secondhand) shops).

Edited March 18, 2008 by Big Beat Steve

[Teasing the Korean]

Years ago I found an OJC vinyl reissue of Mongo Santamaria's Fantasy album "Yambu," which has one of the greatest album covers ever. This one disappeared pretty early on, even when OJC was still pressing vinyl. Very happy to have found this one.

[paul secor]

To make another aural comparison, the early OJC LPs - up to about 275 or so - sound better than the corresponding CDs. After that, the LPs read "remastered by ..., and, at least to my ears, there's no real difference between the LPs and the CDs. I assume they used digital masters after that point.

[bluemonk]

Ten years ago I used to pass the OJCs up when buying records with the idea that I would find earlier pressings, possibly first pressings in the racks. I've never been one to collect multiple copies of an album, so instead of buying the first copy I saw, i.e. an OJC sometimes, I would hold off until an earlier pressing crossed my path. With the rising cost of those originals and their scarcity, I am looking at OJCs from a different perspective. For the most part, I'm finding used copies in near mint condition for $6.00 to $10.00. The sound of these lps is quite acceptable and if I really want the title on vinyl instead of cd, I'm no longer hesitating on purchasing these editions.

It got me to wondering if we'll start to see the prices go up on the OJCs as the originals become more expensive and harder to find. Now that they aren't being pressed, there's a finite number available and a lot of the titles I've been buying don't have much of a chance of being released by the current crop of reissue companies.

Thoughts?

This is interesting. I own probably around 300 OJCs on cd some are easy to find and some very rare ones. I ordered some Gigi Gryce albums not too long ago and most of them are on OJC, but are limited editions, which supposedly means they only pressed so many of them, but what's crazy is why do they do this? There was a Joe Gordon album called "Lookin' Good" that was just re-released as a limited edition OJC, now it's not even available. Alot of those Benny Golson OJCs are like that too, they're just becoming kind of rare and hard-to-find.

The only reason I bought these OJCs is because like you said the originals are very hard to come by esepcially on vinyl, so I guess we'll have to live with these reissues, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

OJC are owned by Concord Records, so maybe we'll start seeing some more titles that have been out-of-print become available to the public soon.

Edited May 16, 2008 by bluemonk

[paul secor]

OJC are owned by Concord Records, so maybe we'll start seeing some more titles that have been out-of-print become available to the public soon.

To use an old line - if you believe that, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.

[RDK]

CDs are going the way of the dodo, so it's hard to imagine Concord keeping low-selling albums in print. To their great credit, though, virtually all OJC are available as digital downloads. I've picked up hundreds over the years from places like emusic.com. Not saying it's good or bad - it's simply the way of the future.

[Claude]

To make another aural comparison, the early OJC LPs - up to about 275 or so - sound better than the corresponding CDs. After that, the LPs read "remastered by ..., and, at least to my ears, there's no real difference between the LPs and the CDs. I assume they used digital masters after that point.

It would be interesting to know if these LPs were really made from the CD masters. Steve Hoffman wrote on his forum that all the OJC LPs were made from the analog masters, but I'm not so sure. He tends to be sloppy with such general statements.

As far as the "analog" OJC LPs go (pre OJC-275), the sound is good but not audiophile. I would not spend more than $10 for them.

The german Mikulski (later ZYX) LP pressings generally sound poor. The pressing quality is good, but the mastering leaves a lot to be desired, as with their remastrred CDs (the OJC20 series)

Edited May 16, 2008 by Claude

[Tom in RI]

Maybe someone here knows what the limit was for Limited OJC's. I think I remember reading somewhere that it was 10,000, which is probably more than the great majority of OJC'c, Limited or otherwise, sold.