Skele-Tone Records — Local services in Rochester

Rochester is out of the way for me, so I rarely get up there. But I was hanging out in Portsmouth recently and had some time to kill, so I took an impromptu drive up to visit Skele-tone. I was impressed with the organization and layout of the store. Everything was neat and filed by genre, name, and all items were stickered with a price. Plenty of room to wander the aisles and browse. Lots of neat items to look at, decent vinyl selection, and the staff were very courteous. My disappointment (hence the 3 stars) was mostly regarding their prices. I found them to be 2x-3x higher than what I see elsewhere. I was in this shop for almost 2 hours, and only ended up finding 1 LP that was worth buying at their asking price. The other 4 or 5 albums I was considering I ended up putting back, as I knew I can easily find them for significantly less at other shops or online resellers. Even though they clearly only sell clean vinyl (no $1 "junk bins" here), a lot of the jackets were in VG or worse condition, yet still commanding TOP-dollar for the LP. Some brand new albums I found were priced 20% higher than I've seen at other shops or even Amazon. Very discouraging to say the least. From my personal experience if you are hoping to score some bargains on vinyl records, new or used, unfortunately this is not the place to go.

The other bummer was all the unofficial pressings that were mixed in with everything else. These are usually unauthorized imported reproductions of rare/OOP titles. Most of them are not labeled as such and can easily confuse or mislead someone who isn't familiar with them. There were tons of them in almost every section, and they are definitely not cheap. I feel like if you're going to stock these "counterfeit" pressings, they should be labeled appropriately so customers know what they are getting. Overall I'm glad I took the time to visit this shop, and although I had fun looking through the inventory it's very unlikely that I will return as I simply can't justify the high prices on stuff that I can easily find at other shops more...

Just so everyone knows not all skinheads are racist. The skinhead movement started in Jamaica along with Ska music around 1969. Then was brought to the U.K. With the likes of the Specials and Madness. Other bands like Blitz. When the National Front started recruiting people they brought the likes of Racist bands. We do not carry these bands in my store. In my years as a punk in NYC we played anti racist shows all over. We supported a group called. S.H.A.R.P which ment skinheads against racial prejudice. Which is still alive today. So before judging someone ask and you will learn. I even created a shirt called The Brotherhood .Punks and Skins Against Racist. So to the person that said I carry racist skinhead items in my store you are totally wrong and you should have come and talked to me personally . Educate yourself and you will learn. We call Racist skinheads Boneheads. They are not...

Beware of European bootlegs of records that haven't been pressed in a while that you think are "Rare" and you thought you got lucky . This store has a ton of them especially if you are new to vinyl so don't get fooled .

I have nothing against them as I've boughten bootlegs from time to time myself as this is just a "Warning" . I recently visited this place for the first time and seen a gentlemen in his late 50's buying about $500-$600 worth of 70's and 80's metal records that he thought were real . He was very excited to find these rare albums as I had a conversation with him . I didn't want to ruin his day so I said nothing as he thought he found the holy grail of record stores lol.

Other than that this is a great store , has a great look and feel and I will visit again when I'm...