Sometimes you have to get lucky.

[Black Stuart]

Yesterday I took a break from my workload to visit 'le marche de jarden' in my commune. It's literally just down the road. They don't just sell plants but clothes and many other things as well. We normally visit to buy strawberries, cherries and a big apple pie - the cherries this year are the best I have ever eaten

There is always a bric-a-brac (tat) section which I normally never visit anymore. I saw that there was a vinyl dealer there and just to confirm that as usual in France s/hand vinyl is both **** and expensive. I was right but next to him was a woman selling various things.

I saw she had 2 boxes of vinyl, as I was there I might as well take a look, well you never know do you. In front were a few Nana Mouskari which looked to be new. Going past these I saw a Yehudi Menuhin/Mendelsshon/LSO - it looked to be new, both the double sleeve and the LP itself. I put this and an Erato LP to one side and started on the second box which was full of boxed sets.

I could'nt believe it but they were all brand new and unplayed - a Decca FFSS/Mozart Sonatas/Radu Lupu& Szymon Goldberg. Philips/Mahler's 7th/Concertgebouw/Bernard Haitink, one of my favourite classics. An Erato copy of Faust with Montserrat Caballe/1977 awarded the 'Le Diapason D'or.
EMI Rossini/Barber of Seville. Philips/ Berlioz, Romeo & Juliette.

The earliest box set was from 1964, the others were all 70s' absolutely mint. I ended up buying 6 x boxed sets and 2 single LPs, double sleeved (were'nt they always in those days) for €20.

How this woman came by them and how were they stored to re-appear in this mint condition after so long I don't know but I do know that I definately got lucky yesterday

[Richard]

Nice one Stuart

We had a similar thing camping in France. There was a bit of a traffic jam through a village caused by a largish car boot sale so we thought we'd have a look too. Lo and behold a vinyl seller with lots of good stuff so we bought about a dozen rock albums.

The good condition can be a puzzle but I suppose there are collectors who rarely play their albums and they may have just been fresh out of storage. I had a mate in the 80's who put all his new records straight onto cassette and never played the vinyl again but kept it mint.

[Black Stuart]

Richard,
you were very lucky, all the rock LPs I have seen in France were all utterly nackered. Visited a music shop in Toulouse and they had a s/hand vinyl section, which they should have been ashamed to offer for sale.

I've got about 4-500 LPs I want to sell in the near future, I will have to see if there are any record fairs in Toulouse, like there used to be in Brighton which was a magnet attracting buyers from London.

Not sure I will keep the Faust boxed set but really looking forward to the Berlioz/Romeo & Julliette.

The Decca FFSS 6LP set is nowhere to be seen on Ebay, closest was a double LP of some of the sonatas @£23.

I wonder if this friend of yours had an older brother. about 4 years ago there was a private seller who was making a fortune selling mint LPs still in their cellophane wrappers. He bought 2 of everything and recorded on to tape/cassette only one - Stones/Beatles he had the lot.

This was not an easy thing for ordinary wage earners to do since LPs in the 60s' were anything but cheap.

[hifidfwallace]

Wow, I´m always hoping to get lucky like this when I visit a flea market, but unfortunately it haven´t really found anything worthwhile yet.