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 ....