Record Store Day, the annual event designed to boost independent-music retailers, may have been on Saturday, but if you were hoping to acquire many of the limited-edition items created for the promotion, you may have had better luck finding them on eBay in the past two days. Unsurprisingly, rare exclusive releases such as a vinyl edition of the Hold Steady’s Heaven Is Whenever have made their way to the auction site in numbers large enough to account for a significant portion of their print run.
Though there could be any number of ways these collectible records could make their way to eBay, blogger Thomas Hartnett has made a compelling case that some retailers may be the ones holding back stock from their brick-and-mortar customers and flipping the records for well over their sticker price online, citing eBay user beck*hansen as a particularly suspicious seller.
If the allegations are true, these shop owners are cynically benefiting from an event designed to help their stores. However, in fairness, if these guys are selling at a premium, it’ll just allow them to keep paying the rent for their stores longer, which is technically the point. It may just be time to give Record Store Day a more accurate name. We like music critic Christopher Weingarten’s suggestion: eBay Eve.