What Kinds of Records and Music Can You Buy on Records By Mail?

Records By Mail (recordsbymail.com) sells collectible vinyl, CDs, and cassettes, with a catalog spanning soul, funk, rock, jazz, country, and folk. The site presents itself as a dealer operating since 1974 and shipping worldwide, so it suits collectors looking for specific pressings rather than casual listeners browsing new releases. You can start from the Recent Arrivals list or from a Popular Artists index, and each listing carries enough label detail to check a pressing before you buy.

Formats you'll find

The storefront is organized around physical media, and the Recent Arrivals section shows the format mix directly:

• 12" LPs at 33rpm — the bulk of listings, including gatefold and picture-disc pressings
• 7" singles at 45rpm — often paired with a B-side in the title, e.g. "working in the coal mine / same"
• CDs and cassettes — named in the site's own description of its stock, though the Recent Arrivals excerpt is dominated by vinyl

If you collect one format only, expect the deepest selection in vinyl LPs and 45s.

What each listing tells you

Listings are built for pressing-level identification, not just title and artist. A typical entry includes:

The catalog number matters most: it lets you confirm you're looking at the pressing you want rather than a reissue. When an entry says "2 listings from $30," the same record is available in more than one copy, and the lowest price is shown as the starting point.

Music styles represented

The Recent Arrivals sample shows real range rather than a single genre:

• Soul and funk — Alexander O'Neal, James Brown, Barbara Lynn, Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Gene Chandler
• Rock — Devo, Pretenders, Beach Boys, Stray, Magnum
• Jazz — Scott Hamilton on Concord Jazz, Shorty Rogers
• Blues and R&B — Canned Heat, B.B. King, Bobby Bland
• Folk, world, and roots — Nonesuch releases of Bulgarian and Yugoslav village music, Franco-Creole biguines from Martinique on Folklyric
• Vocal-group and doo-wop — Spotlights, Enchantments, Vocalaires, Galaxies

Prices in the sample run from about $5 for common 45s to $75 for a scarcer single, so the range covers both budget digging and higher-end collectibles.

Two ways to browse

Recent Arrivals is the better entry point if you want to see what just came in and don't have a fixed want list — it reads like a dealer's fresh-stock sheet, with condition and label detail already attached.

Popular Artists works when you already know whose records you're chasing. The index lists names such as James Brown, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, the Kinks, Elvis Presley, the Who, Marvin Gaye, the Dells, the Impressions, the O'Jays, the Temptations, Fleetwood Mac, Fats Domino, Neil Young, David Bowie, Ray Charles, the Doors, and B.B. King.

Deciding whether it fits you

Records By Mail is a good match if you want original or specific pressings identified by label and catalog number, you collect across soul, rock, jazz, and roots, and you're comfortable buying from a long-running mail-order dealer. It's a weaker fit if you want only new sealed releases, need streaming or digital files, or prefer to browse by genre category rather than by arrival date or artist name.

The site also runs a newsletter for stock updates and special offers, and a "Selling a Collection?" page for sellers — useful if you're offloading records as well as buying.