Yesterday I attended my local record fair. It’s called DiscoDays and it’s been held twice a year, in spring and fall, since 2009. I like it because of its size: it’s neither too big nor too small. Some record fairs are so huge that you don’t even know where to look. Deciding how to spend your money can become difficult when the selection is so wide. This thought spurred me to write a post with some useful tips to approach a record convention. Some are kinda obvious, but I decided to include them anyway, especially for those who are new to the game. Better safe than sorry, you know.

• Set a budget.
  You don’t want to eat only bread and water for the next month, right? So, unless you’re Bill Gates or Donald Trump (and I hope you’re not), do the math and figure out how much you want/can spend. After that, set a small backup budget that you are carrying just in case you find too many good deals. Better spending a little more than you thought than regretting not being able to pick up something you really wanted. Keep in mind that only big fairs have an ATM machine to draw funds and not all sellers accept cards, so you better bring some cash. Also, sellers pay taxes on card payments, so they are usually more keen on giving discounts if you’re paying by cash.

• Choose company carefully.
  An uninterested friend/unsupportive partner might get bored and press you to hurry. A friend who shares a lot of the same tastes with you could be even worse, though. If browsing together, you might end up fighting over who’s taking this or that. If browsing separately, you might get jealous of each other’s finds. The perfect company is someone interested in records whose taste doesn’t really match yours or someone uninterested but supportive. Going alone can also be a good choice.

• The choice is yours, don’t be late.
  Try to show up around the opening time. That’s for two reasons: most people get there later in the morning/day and, when the fair gets too crowded, browsing through the bins can become frustrating. Also, if you get there too late, most of the best stuff might already be gone. Once, I got there 30 minutes after the opening and met a friend of mine walking out. He had secured a bag of interesting CDs that I would have surely picked up, had I come before him.

• Take your time (do it right).
  Don’t blow all your budget at the first couple of booths you’re browsing. Grab only what you don’t really want to miss and keep mental track of other interesting stuff. You might want to come back to those once you’ve checked out the other sellers (and if something is gone, well, you’ll get something else. They were second choices anyway).

• Set priorities.
  The point of a record fair is buying records you might not be able to get from your usual places (be it Amazon or your local record stores), and that’s how I set my priorities. The only exception is when I find a record much underpriced compared to my usual outlets: that’s a good reason to pick it up at the fair anyway.

• Charge your phone.
  Having a fully functioning smartphone will make your cratedigging easier for a number of reasons. First of all, if you have a big collection cataloged in an app like Discogs or Music Collector, you can clear any doubts within a few seconds and avoid buying records you already have (it happened twice to me, and it wasn’t even records from small, unknown bands: it was Black Sabbath and Queensryche!). Also, if you spot an unknown record that looks interesting, you can quickly google it and learn enough to figure out whether it might be your cup of tea or not. Last but not least, if you’re new to the game and don’t know much about prices, you can check the marketplaces and see if the price is fair or if you can get the same record (in the same conditions) much cheaper somewhere else (this doesn’t happen often because shipping costs for vinyl are usually high).

• Check, check, check.
  The best thing about buying at a fair vs online is that what you see is what you get. You can check the conditions of records and sleeves with your own eyes, so basically no risk of opening a package (after waiting for weeks) just to find out that the record you ordered is not near mint and it was merely overgraded by the seller. When buying used/unsealed LPs or CDs, always (always) remember to check the discs themselves, even when the jackets/cases look pristine. Avoid anything that looks noticeably warped or scuffed, but dirty (even very dirty) records are still worth a shot if they are cheap or rare. They might literally come back to new life after wet cleaning.

That said, remember that rules (and bones) are made to be broken, so feel free to bend or improve these tips to make them best fit your own needs and have fun digging.