Sheena Easton Rereleased (oh no!!)

Factual Questions
1

About two years ago I noticed some old Sheena Easton CDs selling for A LOT on eBay. So I went around to my local cd shops and to make a long story short bought a bunch of them.

The three biggies “You Could’ve Been With Me,” “Best Kept Secret,” and “Madness, Money And Music.” were routinely selling for between $50 and $100.

I literally have 20 of the above CDs. I paid around $150.00 for all of them. I held on to them as the prices were getting bigger

Now One Way Records has rereleased ALL of her EMI cds and the prices on eBay plummeted. To add insult to injury the new cds contain previously unrelased tracks, so now I have to go out and buy the new CDs to get the unreleased tracks (I’m also a fan)

My question is should I attempt to hold on to my CDs. They are the orginal EMI releases. I know people sometimes pay more for the originals but the fact that the new releases (even if they are on a different lable) have more tracks makes it seem like the orignals are pretty much worthless

Any ideas if I shoud hold them?

2

Welcome to the world of speculation. If my time playing Magic: the Gathering in college taught me one thing, it’s that once something rare is rereleased, the original drops down to slightly above the price of the new version. Yes, there’s no doubt some purists who’d want the original byt their numbers are going to be low against those who are casual listers and just want to listen to some Sheena Easton. I’d say to sell them for whatever you can get for them and accept that Fate took a look at you and laughed.

3

Sheena Easton ?

You mean that little Scottish girl who hit some of the notes she aimed at - collectable ?

Well, well, well.

4

The thing I am wondering is I have seen other artists like Olivia Newton-John. Her Greatest Hits CD routinely sells for over $50.00 even though you can get it on another format. Same with some of her earlier lps to CDs

5

In general terms, the collector value of an object is based on several factors.

1)The intrinsic value–an ounce of gold is worth more than an ounce of tin or an ounce of feathers, etc. In the Sheena Easton CD case, the intrinsic value is extremely low.

2)The scarcity–how many collectors are after the same object. With the rerelease of the Sheena Easton CD’s, the objects to collectors ratio skyrocketed causing the price to plummet. this is supply and demand. If you are to have any hope, see The Monkees example below.

3)The rarity–the actualy numerical rarity of the object as opposed to scarcity. This is perhaps a subsection of the following “hype” section. In general, rarer items can sell for more than others even if they are equally scarce. Sometimes, however, it takes a while to find someone willing to pay the price. On e-bay, set you minimum high on a truly rare object. This however doesn’t apply to Sheena Easton, her stuff isn’t really rare.

4)The hype–did you notice what happened to the price of McDonald’s teeny beenie babies? When they first came out, the prices were high. But they were something like 2 million of **each **of them made, so the prices dropped radically. Any hype associated with Sheena Easton is long gone.

Unless you make your own. Arista records rereleased all The Monkees cd’s in the late 1980’s. However, only the first 3 albums were rereleased on CD in America. The other 6 you had to get imported from Japan, except for *Head * which you could also get from England on Lightning Records. This led to the later CD’s having an inflated price to collectors. In the mid-1990’s Rhino rereased all the CD’s with bonus tracks. This led to the prices for the Arista CD’s to drop. Except for *Pisces, Capricorn, Aquarious and Jones, Ltd * and Lightning Records Head, both of which actually dropped a little but recoverd in price. Why, because *PCAJ, Ltd. * and *Head * each contain different version of a few songs. Sellers were able to push that difference to the completionists. With the release of *Missing Links Vol. 3 * one of the versions of the songs from *Head * was released in a more accesable fashion and the price dropped some. Still it has one different version (The Porpoise Song, if you’re keeping score) and a much cooler book, so it’s price hasn’t completely tanked.

So I’d listen to your Sheena Easton CD’s close and see if you have any differences. If you do, you might (note, might, not will) be able to hype them and get something out of them. If not, I’d cut your loses.

6

Several DVDs were at one time out-of-print and selling for upwards of $200 a pop on eBay, Little shop of Horrors, Spinal Tap, Platoon. But then they were re-released, although not exactly the same, and the prices plummeted. So that is probably what you have to look forward to.