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Author Topic: Ebay Tapes  (Read 15082 times)

Offline Ben

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Ebay Tapes
« on: September 19, 2008, 07:05:29 PM »
I have been buying 7 1/2 tapes off ebay.  There seems to be alot of tapes
being sold in the last few weeks. Is this common or was this the summer
to clean house of all this old junk?

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Offline ironbut

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2008, 06:57:08 PM »
Hey Ben. The quantity of tape on eBay really goes up and down but there's usually quite a few. I started collecting old tapes 3 or 4 years ago and there's more now then then. On any given week, there's probably two times more now. I think the main reason for this is that there are more sellers who are specializing in reel to reel. It used to be that the majority of tapes were being sold by folks that sold everything or records/cd's with just a couple of tapes here and there. Since the Tape Project, the number of tapes that have resulted in bidding wars increased dramatically. The sellers took note of this and began to search out lots of tapes in the hopes that a few would bring crazy high prices. About a year ago, there was a feeding frenzy on jazz and classical tapes being bought by bidders from Europe and Asia. These guys were bidding whatever it took to get the tapes they wanted. I followed the activity of a couple of them and it wasn't unusual for each of them to spend close to $2000 a week. And this went one every week for months. Since they were bidding against each other the selling prices got totally crazy (very often selling for $75 to $200 more than the normal price). A good bit of that inflation still exists but it has gone down from where it was 6 months ago. You can imagine how elated the sellers must have been when a tape that they purchase as part of a large lot for $1 each sold for $250. And when they sometimes sold 5-10 in a week many said " forget these Barbie doll outfits, where can I get more of these tape things?". But, just like Beanie Babies, the big money buyers get what they want pretty quickly and things tend to quiet down after a while. But the sellers who were forward thinking, reinvested some of their new found wealth into buying more stock. For the most part they didn't know why this tape sold for 100 times the amount of the others they had for sale and unless they happened to be music collectors themselves, they didn't have time to figure it out either. So they bought everything they could find with storage space being the only limiting factor.
Fast forward to the present. There's more demand but for the most part, the deep pockets have come and gone except for the collectors that are always looking (when I say collectors, I mean collectors of a particular band or era). It's useless to bid against these guys because they will get what they want. Someone that just wants to listen to a tape hasn't got a prayer bidding against them but the collectors are an important part of the food chain. They keep interest up with the sellers. They're happy to sell 30 tapes with $4 profit as long as every 2 weeks or so they sell one with $200 profit. That keeps the tapes flowing and out of the landfill (which, you can be sure, is where they'd been going until this latest surge of interest started).
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Offline Ben

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2008, 10:12:54 PM »
I have a limit about $15 per tape since more than that I can buy the
CD cheaper and only about 25% are at 7.5 IPS. Once I get more in I
can start comparing to CD's for music quality.
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Offline commonman

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2008, 09:17:55 PM »
I noticed you said some of the pre-recorded tapes are 7.5 inches per sec.  What would be the most common speed? 
And, what is a good price for a pre-recorded tape in good condition (I mean average).
Jim Freschi

Offline jcmusic

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2008, 09:28:50 PM »
The price varies from tape to tape, speed of the tape plays a part in the decideing price.

Jay
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Offline Ben

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2008, 09:42:45 PM »
It is the shipping that kills ya!
I tend to want to buy *them all* now that I found how good
they sound. I would guess 75% are at 3 3/4 IPS
for open reel tapes. Tapes tend to be in the $10 range, with about $10
per tape for shipping. If you can get a batch of tapes you may save on shipping
costs. All I can say is with Ebay, the seller has the advantage 90% of the time
since I find it hard to purchase many tapes from the same seller, and the buyer
is nickled and dimed to death. I never know just what coming up in the future
so I am never sure what to set my bid limit at. In the last two weeks I spent
about $500 Canadian and a good chunk of the money was shipping and handling charges and postage. Note this also includes a order to 'Michael Percy Audio'
for a bottle of Last #10 tape Preservative. Tapes I bought ranged from about $3.00
(lot of 4 tapes) to about $40 for a BUY IT NOW tape.


PS. to the last posted reply 'declining price' Ha! both types are going up in price.

« Last Edit: October 12, 2008, 10:06:07 PM by Ben »
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Offline niklasthedolphin

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2008, 03:52:54 AM »
What about prerecorded 1/4'' 15 ips ? track tapes.
Are they in existence?

Except Tape Project's project of course.

"dolph"

Offline jcmusic

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #7 on: October 13, 2008, 07:42:48 AM »
Every now and then I see a 15ips tape on ebay, they are usually a master of some sort. I seen a master of a Madonna's (Open Your Heart) go for over $300 on ebay UK not long ago.

Jay
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Offline Ben

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #8 on: October 13, 2008, 09:10:31 AM »
I picked a pair of 10.5" reels of ebay, with Country Music for about $10 each.
If they are not sticky, I think I got a good deal for just some back ground music.
They were listed at 7 1/2 IPS.
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Offline dodgeaspen

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #9 on: December 31, 2009, 08:42:53 PM »
Every now and then I see a 15ips tape on ebay, they are usually a master of some sort. I seen a master of a Madonna's (Open Your Heart) go for over $300 on ebay UK not long ago.

Jay
I did not realize that their were that many tapes out their. It would be cool to hear a master at 15ips from pro studio.

Offline mittg

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #10 on: March 09, 2010, 07:38:16 PM »
I am seeing quite a few "quadraphonic" tapes on ebay. Are these able to be palyed by a 2 channel, 2track/4 track R2R? I have read the explanations on this site but do not seem to find a difinitive yes or no.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2010, 07:39:51 PM by mittg »
Gerry Mittica

Offline ironbut

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #11 on: March 09, 2010, 08:25:05 PM »
Hey Gerry,

steveidosound has a pretty good explanation of track formats in the Beginner's Guide located above the General forum. It's post #34 in that thread.

http://www.tapeproject.com/smf/index.php/topic,595.30.html

Toward the end of his discussion of track formats, here says a little regarding 4 track/4 channel discrete Quadraphonic. For those, you do need a 4 track playback head. There was also a format that was mostly on lp's which was a "derived" quad. You needed a special decoder to get the two rear channels but those were played with a 1/4 track head (2 channel).
Most of this stuff is off the top of my foggy head but I believe there's a web site devoted to Quadraphonic. I'm sure they would know how these different formats were labeled.
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Offline steveidosound

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #12 on: March 10, 2010, 02:00:14 AM »
I am seeing quite a few "quadraphonic" tapes on ebay. Are these able to be palyed by a 2 channel, 2track/4 track R2R? I have read the explanations on this site but do not seem to find a difinitive yes or no.

Definitive No.
I believe you would get only the front L/R channels with  a conventional stereo 1/4 track machine. Or possibly the front and rear left only?
A 2 track stereo head would cover 2 tracks each on the tape for each of it's two gaps so it would "mix" two channels of the tape together somewhat unpredictably.
 Bottom line is you need a 4 gap discreet 4 track head with 4 deck outputs to 4 channels of amplification and 4 speakers to hear the quad mix.

To my knowledge neither of the schemes used for quad from Lps ever made it onto tape in any official sense. One (SQ) involved matrix encoding from 2 channels like Dolby surround, which would certainly work. Some SQ quad mixes were just put on Lps without making a big deal out of it, perhaps some of those made it to pre-recorded tape. The other Lp system CD4, involved the use of a multiplexed 30kHz. carrier signal with the difference between the front and rear channels. To my knowledge this was never tried with tape. It was hard enough to recover the 30kHz signal cleanly from vinyl, but if your tape machine responded that far up perhaps it could work...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadraphonic_sound
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Offline astrotoy

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Re: Ebay Tapes
« Reply #13 on: March 10, 2010, 03:42:00 PM »
What about prerecorded 1/4'' 15 ips ? track tapes.
Are they in existence?

Except Tape Project's project of course.

"dolph"

So far, I believe that all of the prerecorded 1/4" 15ips 2 track tapes that I have seen advertised for sale have been "master dubs" - not commercially recorded. The one exception besides TP has been Quinton in Germany/Austria.    Larry
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