Ever wondered exactly what we do here at Atlas Records?
A lot has changed since our last “day in the life” post. As Atlas Records has grown, so has the team behind the scenes. So, we thought it was time to pull back the curtain again. This time, we’re starting with the buying team: the people dedicated to making the process of selling your collection to us as smooth, transparent, and hassle-free as possible.
In this blog post, we’ll follow Sam through a typical morning of buying collections, then join me (Hannah) for an afternoon of buying emails and record processing.
How Do We Buy Records?
Records come to us daily from people all over the country via a courier service, or if people are local to us, they are welcome to drop a record collection in with us to be valued.
At the start of the day, Sam will sort through the records we purchased the day before.
8:30am-9:00am:
All of the previous day’s purchases will be neatly organised, and to start his day, Sam will sort through each purchase. As we buy collections as job lots, there will generally be a few items which we won’t be able to sell, either due to poor condition or low value. Sam will take these out before he puts them on our storage shelves, ready to be processed – we’ll come to that later in the blog.
9:00am-12:30pm:
For the rest of the morning, Sam will go through each collection that came into us the day before. Every record’s value is determined using Discogs, eBay, plus our own historic sales data, and that data is inputted into our valuation system. Once every record has been assigned a value, it comes to an accumulative total. Sam will then call the owner of the collection with the offer and give them a detailed breakdown of certain aspects of their collection, often mentioning records which have brought the offer up, or unique records which we don’t see very often.
12:30pm-1:00pm:
Lunchtime! As the weather is getting colder, most of us are turning towards our microwaves for a warm lunch. There’s lots of soup, home-cooked meals, leftovers and ready-meals being warmed in the microwave, keeping us fuelled and warm for the afternoon. There will also be lots of conversation - often discussing our evenings or weekends, or any exciting upcoming plans.
1:00pm-2:30pm:
Switching to the events of my afternoon now. From around 1pm until 2:30pm, I will respond to all of the new enquiries which have come in overnight, either with a phone call or an email. We have a large volume of people enquiring about selling their collection to us, especially over a weekend, so on a Monday, it's common for me to be responding to new enquiries all day! In the call I make, I will usually get information about the record collection, including artists and condition. It's lovely to hear the stories about the individual collections, including how some records came into the owner's collection, or stories around which records hold significant importance to them. If it's a collection we're interested in purchasing, I will offer our courier service, and give them advice for how to best pack their collection.
2:30pm-3:00pm:
Usually around this time I'll be processing records, which is the first step in getting the records from being purchased to being on the website. We'll take a box of purchased records, and start individually cleaning the sleeves and the records inside. Once cleaned, we will give both the record and sleeve a grade. Then we will match them to their correct pressings using Discogs, logging them on a processing system developed by Chris - the owner, so that we have record of what we have processed.
3:00pm-4:00pm:
Between these times I will move to the next stage of the process - grading. This is our quality control aspect, where we check that the person who processed the records has matched the record to the correct pressing, along with listening to the record's audio, and giving that a grade.
Once grading is complete, we will take the box of records into our picturing room, ready to be photographed.
4:00pm-5:00pm:
For the last hour of the day, I'll go back to checking the inbox, replying to new enquiries and responding to any existing enquiries, making sure we keep in touch with anyone wanting to sell their collection to us. Emails will range from finding out more information about people's collections, to organising courier services, organising for packaging to be dispatched to customers, and confirming sent payments for collections we have bought that day.
5pm is home time for us all, which for me will mean a drive home - concert in the car a non-negotiable, usually to a Florence and the Machine playlist - followed by dinner, and usually settling down to watch some TV to unwind from the day.
We hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into what our days are like here. We have another blog planned in the near future focusing on following the record's journey from being pictured to being packed and sent out to customers.
