That's The Internet. You are not The Internet.

If there was ever any doubt that the second-hand vinyl market is on the up then I've seen the final shreds of evidence in the last few months as two local charity shops have decided to dispense with their time-honoured £1 maximum price for all LPs and instead apply, to be polite, some rather ambitious pricing.

Now I understand that their raison d'etre is to raise the maximum funds from the items that come their way, and that's fine. I have no issue with that at all. I don't have a god-given right to walk into one with a crisp £5 note and expect to come out with a butchers cover edition of 'Yesterday & Today' and 'God Save The Queen' on A&M and still have change for a latte with an extra shot. It's a fine-line and these two shops have crossed over to the wrong side.

Conversations with staff in these two stores both led to the ever-so-predictable statement:

"We looked them up on the internet to price them up."

Again, fine. The internet is a marvellous source of information. But that information needs to be interpreted and used correctly. And, crucially, the internet has the capability to reach billions of people around the world. Applying a price from eBay (the price for that completed listing was in red for a very good reason), putting the sticker on first and then writing the price on in biro so that it will leave an indent, assuming the sticker doesn't tear off part of the sleeve in the first place, before putting the LP in the window to warp, sorry, to attract customers is not the same as the internet.

To be fair this is not a new phenomenon. I have fond memories of a charity shop by the bus station in Gloucester approximately 20 years which amongst the usual Semprini and Studio-2-Stereo LPs (all £1 each) had a copy of Midge Ure's ground-breaking 1985 LP 'The Gift'. For whatever reason it was a fiver. As this was pre-internet a member of staff must have decided that he still had a huge following. Either that or Joe Dolce volunteered there and was taunting Midge's fans one last time.

Back to the present day, and in the first shop the member of staff was keen to tell me about a couple of things they had behind the counter as they were definitely valuable. One was - whisper it - signed. Naturally I asked if I could see what it was, already excited by the fact that I was absolutely, definitely about to get my grubby mitts on a fully-signed, low-numbered copy of The White Album.

Instead I was handed a signed LP by Mike & Bernie Winters.

The conversation moved to the other likely reason for their belief that they could increase their prices for LPs - the new record shop down the road. "Do they take second-hand records do you know?". Yes they do I replied. "Great. Maybe I'll take this down there and see if they're interested".

I so wish I'd been there for that.

A couple of weeks later they (the charity shop, not the record shop) had the Mike & Bernie Winters LP out priced at £20. It is, of course, still there.

In shop number two the item that leapt out at me was a Japanese pressing of a Brenda Lee LP, complete with the OBI strip. It was £7.95. For a Brenda Lee LP. I admit, the packaging was quite lovely and if it had been 80p like the majority of what they had I may have been tempted. But what chance is there that someone will walk in and pay 10 times that? Actually, I have previous form here, when the same charity shop went down a similar path a few years ago. And to that end I remain confident that this is a mere blip. It'll take a little while for the penny to drop but normal service will be resumed within six months and I'll be sipping that double-shot latte while listening to Johnny Rotten remind me at 45rpm that there is no future.

Update, June 13th 2015. Mike & Bernie Winters are still up for grabs ....

The Cream of the crop

Manuel and the Music of the Mountains. Geoff Love and his Orchestra. So far so typical. Abba's Greatest Hits. Don't really need it, but go on then. Saturday Night Fever - maybe. Ah, it's only record one. Pop that back. The Seekers, Leo Sayer, Peters & Lee, Five Live Yardbirds,

Harry Secombe ... What? Hang on. Five Live Yardbirds? That was unexpected. Herb Alpert. More Leo Sayer. A Now! compilation, again with one LP missing. Back to business as usual. The Rolling Stones No.2. Fresh Cream. We're onto something here! Not wishing to sound greedy but sadly that was as good as it got. The Stones LP has a heavy scuff across most of side 2 (I could feel it through the cleaning cloth) and the laminate is coming off the sleeve but for a quid? Bargain. And thanks to Sylvia Carpos of St Leonards-on-Sea, who was a past owner of at least two of these.

A night in with alcohol & music

Despite many years of owning records I've never taken cleaning them too seriously. Sure, I'll remove surface dust and I do own a fairly basic brush for this but more often than not if I'm wearing a long-sleeve top then the chances are I'll just motion over the LP with my arm instead.

But a few charity shop purchases, ones that were too good to pass up despite the previous owner looking like they've tried the 1980s 'eat your dinner off a CD' challenge across other formats, have made it necessary for me to look at alternatives. Plus it's getting warmer and I'll be reverting to wearing t-shirts soon.

I considered dropping a few LPs into Sister Ray, who clean records at 50p per side, but I rarely venture into central London. I looked into machines such as the Disco-Antistat Record Cleaner; reviews were generally favourable but even the positive ones made reference to using home-made fluid rather than the one supplied, the active ingredient being isopropyl.

Further research suggested the machine may have not been necessary. As such I obtained a supply of isopropyl from Maplins (£14.99 for 1 litre) - it can be bought for less online - a small bottle of deionsed water (Robert Dyas, 99p for 500ml - many sites mention distilled water) and a pack of microfibre cloths, also from Robert Dyas at £3.49 for 4 (again, lint free cloths are mentioned elsewhere).

On opening the isopropyl it was clear that this was not the sort of alcohol that would make a drinkable cocktail. I poured a small amount into a bowl and diluted with the deionised water. I wasn't overly scientific about this but the common consensus is the mix should be around 20% isopropyl to 80% water. Ready to go, I pulled out the chosen test LP - 'Hi-Fidelity' by REO Speedwagon (yeah, I know, but come on, it's got 'Take It On The Run' on it). This was pretty mouldy on one side, which I had previously tried to rectify with a splash of tap water. It cleared most of the mould but was still noisy when played; this was most likely due to mineral deposits from the tap water, hence the need to use the distilled or deionised variety. A few wipes with the isopropyl solution and the remaining mould was quickly gone; the LP developed a definite shine. I dried off the excess solution with a second cloth and left it to dry. On playing it the worst of the background noise had gone.

Encouraged by this I decided to jump straight in with the filthiest LP I knew I had; Fleetwood Mac's self-titled debut. The previous owner - Tony Moore according to the annotation on the sleeve - clearly did not wear long-sleeved shirts (or if he did, he never washed them). It was precisely the sort of LP that record companies would have pointed at 30 years ago and said 'This is why CDs are a good idea'. I had tried to play it once and one side in particular was unlistenable. I made the mistake of not photographing the LP in its pre-cleaned state, though I can offer (right) a picture of what came off its grubbiest side. Now it's fair to say that an LP with that much dirt on it won't suddenly reveal itself to be in mint condition; indeed, the dirt was obscuring significant wear. But crucially it does now play pretty well and doesn't skip.

I ended up tackling half-a-dozen LPs with excellent results. For an outlay of less than £20 I reckon I have sufficient materials to clean upwards of 50 albums before I'll need any more deionised water; I may never need to buy isopropyl ever again. Some rubber gloves wouldn't go amiss though, particularly when cleaning a large batch.