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Just like Lush Life this is another terrific recording just the price holds me back. Having said that as I type listening to the Craft Chet Baker Riverside recordings and they are so well done. So.......

You said "Clearly by delaying the pre-sale date by a few days, Craft hopes to avoid the backlash produced by the "for sale upon announcement" sales method used for Lush Life, the company's debut "Small Batch" release."

Actually they seemed to create more of an issue, in that now everyone that wants to try to get a copy, collectors, listeners, flippers, curious people who wouldn't buy a Yusef Lateef regular release, etc can all try to pound the Craft online store at the same time for what amounts to a relative handful of available product. You don't think there is going to be backlash in this case as well. Craft can't win in this respect. It would have been better to just put the thing on sale when they sent out an email (which I got) announcing the pre-sale. Oh well, it is what it is.

How about focusing on something that was recorded in The last 30 years

Well....one of the readers was right! I logged in at top of the hour....and as I was presented the credit card page on the release to subscribers WITH A CODE, it was sold out of the first 300.
You're absolutely correct, this is not a great experience. Guess I'm waiting for the other "sales" later, but already not thrilled.
I did get the Coltrane release and enjoy it quite a bit, being a top 5 fav of mine from the Trane....but buying vinyl is getting to not being fun anymore with RSD crowds, flippers, used records commanding too much money with overhyped condition, and I'm 54 years old, and know what it was like to buy vinyl in my prime...and always kept my records. Anyway...guess I'm an old grumbly man, now! :-). Peace, all.

I tried to order this disc the minute it was available (8:00 am PST). After filling in my information, I clicked "order" and I was greeted with "sold out." Something's fishy!

Logged in at 8am sharp, access code in clipboard, and it went very smoothly. What expedited the process for me was that all the contact and cc info was pre-filled, as I’d purchased on the site before. It’s amazing the site didn’t crash given the crazy spike in usage that must have occurred.

But take heart... Open-to-all sales start (and probably end) at 2pm PST today.

Also previous customer with info in place, in cart attempted to make payment and poof, sold out, but already on Ebay for 600.00? Once these controlling companies saw the opportunity of Vinyl they never let a way to screw it up go by. They are supporting the flipper market and frustrating the music lovers by creating a frenzy with "small batch" "limited edition" for an item that OJC just re-issued in the past year of a 50+ year old recording! They can produce enough to go around but want the hype of sold out in 1 (one) minute (look at us). Fed up and scratch Craft from my income! Please Chad, Josh, & Abey don't fall in this rabbit hole, you're much better than this, please excuse me if I left someone out.

Tried again. Same results as with the "subscriber early access coupon." Not impressed.

1000 records sold out after 1 minute.

No Craft, you can’t tell us that’s real.

"Had" a copy in my cart, tried to pay, got bounced....
Ridiculous. Was hoping to upgrade over my trusty OJC.

contracts all those releases again and produces them for music lovers, not just some collectors items for tricky Ebay and Discogs resellers.

It was sold out in less than 5 seconds, I had a stop watch set. Browser ready to buy. I somehow managed one, went to PayPal selected my payment method and on they way back to the site it said it was sold out? It’s still in my cart...lol.

This was the dumbest and complete waste of time.

Had three copies for sale.

My beloved hobby has become GameStop stock.

Products that require virtual lining up and starting keyboard clubbing at a precise second are the opposite of fun.

These are the NFTs of audio.

I ordered as soon as it became available yesterday. (I spent the couple minutes prior to that continually refreshing the page.) I had it, the PayPal order was processing, then it shot me back to Craft's page with an "item sold out" error. This was all in less than a minute after it went live.

I love EASTERN SOUNDS, but I'm not about to pay 6 or 7 times as much from a flipper. It was a bummer to somehow miss the boat while standing in the middle of the freakin boat. So it goes, my 70s pressing still sounds fine to me and I still have that hundred in my pocket for records I don't already own.

But since we're all here, can anyone comment on the OJC pressing(s) of this one?

This whole '1000' limited copies scam is really bad for the vinyl community. It's fine if you release the 'limited edition' with a standard pressing for $35 without the bells & whistles, but all Craft is doing is perpetuating this 'flipper' business that has ruined a lot of other hobbies/passions. Back in the mid-eighties I got into collection comics with my son (now 42) who just wanted to enjoy buying and reading comic books. Soon, as the comics became popular again, the companies started to release special editions and limited editions and before you knew it, the flippers came in and started buying out all of these versions and reselling them for 5-10x the original price. It ruined the hobby for my son and I as I wouldn't partake in that frenzy. Now I see it happening to the record business. It truly saddens me that someone who wants to listen to a really nice pressing of Coltrane's Lush Life, will have to pay $600-$1000. And for those vinyl lovers who just love to listening to a great pressing have to be left out because the flippers are waiting, chomping at the bit, to get their hands on these and then reselling them for 5x the price to make a fast buck. Oh well, at least I can enjoy the Tone Poet and Classic series from Blue Note.

OJC of this is '91 - not as sweet as some of those 80's George Horn remastered titles I think elmore244 is referring to, but serviceable. Couple of '72 Prestige green label reissues on Discogs right now for $65 or so. They can sound very good, too.

This is not good for the music and for the VC.
With such price policy the vinyl industry may be shooting itself in the foot.

Now available on ebay for appr. $550 to $700. At the moment 12 different sellers. Another 17 can be found on discogs. I am pretty sure these sellers have four or five copies of each one.
If I would be Craft, I would sell 10 records on site and the rest on ebay or discogs or private sellers.
If I would be me, I would neverever buy this record for more than $120.

Something that I would hate to see happening here, but has occurred before in the record industry is this scenario...company produces a minimum number of the album, goes through the motions of 'supposedly' putting said album on the market, sells just a tiny number to a few outsiders, and the rest go to the 'lucky few' who happen to be connected with the company. Magically, these albums are released over time at a major profit...and just as magically from the same source. ( the insider at the company). Could this be the case here??

Same Old Stuff,

Why can't they just do a Craft Recordings subscription? Whoever is running this program has a Ticketmaster mentality.

But for the most part the current batches are a pale immitation of even the early OJCs, never mind the Craft Record releases which are mostly stellar.