"btw, your ebay monitor, is stuff really going for those prices on ebay? that's nuts"

Actually, with the exception of some extrmely scarce and high-priced gems, the overall averages and saleability of rare AOR and hard rock CDs is down from 5 years ago.

But yes, at the far end of the rarity spectrum certain titles do bring "moon money."

Reissues and rampant bootlegging have driven down prices on a lot of material. I leave downloading out of the equation, because collectors by and large have no interest in copies, and those who engage in downloading most likely are not the same population who would spend higher prices on rare discs to begin with.

Printing and replicating technologies have become so refined and so (relatively) inexpensive, that the vast majority of even the collecting population could not tell bootlegs from the originals. Examples: recent quantity of Japanese Kuni discs released onto the market, Stage Dolls - Commandos from last year, the spate of Cobra - First Strike discs showing up on Ebay (price averages on that title have plummeted over the last 6 months), the Lillian Axe S/T + 5 Japanese "release" from 2 years ago... in many cases these bootlegs are of higher quality than legal releases on certain labels. Go figure.

The boots coming out of Greece and eastern Europe are still extremely easy to finger as bootlegs (Alien and Kuni slipcase "reissues", Emergency releases, etc.), but there are some outfits that are really putting a lot of effort into the quality of their boots... because it doesn't COST them much more to do a high-quality bootleg than to release trash.



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