collecting guide introduction rare tori affordable tori online stores rmta price guide uk price guide discography y kant tori read little earthquakes under the pink boys for pele choirgirl hotel venus and back strange little girls scarlet's walk tales of a librarian welcome to sunny... other appearances b-sides list miscellaneous about this site contact me	Introduction to collecting as one of the most collectable artists in the world (tori has been in the top 100 of the record collector top 500 collectable artists for a number of years now), tori amos has some expensive and much sought-after rarities in her back-catalogue. but collecting tori's music isn't just about breaking the bank to own that original y kant tori read album or a rare promotional only cd. it's well over 10 years since her first album was released tori is now onto album number seven, and with various singles, promo's, imports and limited editions released from each album, there is a lot of collectable material out there! so what exactly can you collect? there are countless different tori memorabilia such as tour merchandise, posters, displays, t-shirts and even cereal boxes! but what do we all love tori for? her music of course, so that's the most important thing to collect..... COLLECTING PROMO'S given free to the media, some of these promotional items can be expensive due to their limited availability or more attractive to collector's because they differ from the commercial release with different packaging, track listings etc. but by the same token, many are just the same as the official release, or only feature one track or just remixes of the one song. these promos are generally not worth much more than the regular release. basically they can vary from the unique and very rare "precious things" cd to the more mundane uk "cornflake girl". one thing all promo's have in common is that they are not available from your local tower records or virgin megastore (although virgin did, at one point, have bootleg copies of y kant tori read on sale!). THE 'COMPLETIST' COLLECTOR owning every commercially released tori single can be very expensive and hard work as most of her early singles and limited editions are highly collectable, even the prices of releases as late as the cornflake girl limited edition cd have increased greatly, but they are not impossible to find. uk single releases are generally more collectable than any other, the simple reason being that most of the singles are deleted and are long sold-out in the record shops, and the only way to buy any of these items is through mail-order companies, record dealers and of course other tori fans! THE SONG COLLECTOR if you are more interested in collecting tori's songs rather than owning each and every single, then your task is a bit easier..... although tori has released a lot of songs and sang a lot of covers. some (though not all) of the b-sides from early and rare uk singles can be found on the much more freely available american releases. for example 'sugar', a b-side from the rare uk China cd is available on the easily found amercian hey jupiter ep (albeit a live version, not the original). i have compiled a list of every b-side and non-album track and where you can find them in the b-side list. BOOTLEGS/ LIVE RECORDINGS this site is really all about collecting official tori music, but probably the easiest way to find rare tori songs is by collecting bootlegs, so i must include a bit about them. every tori song ever released (and some not!) can be found on bootlegs, even the ultra-rare "baltimore" is available on a few. most boots are live cd's but there are many collections of b-sides and other rare tracks too. the quality of these cd's vary drastically so it is worth checking the bootleg discography for information about a particular boot, it includes track listings and other details of just about every bootleg that's ever been produced . you don't have to buy commercial bootlegs though, a great way to get to know tori's music is to trade tapes of live tori shows. there are a couple of webrings devoted to trading boots, alligator boots and the tori traders ring. bootleg's aren't at all rare so a genereal guide for how much to pay is: 1 disc - $20-30 2 discs - $40-55 nowadays there are a lot of cd-r bootlegs available, there are not worth anywhere near as much as they are cheap to produce, we recommend paying no more than $10 per disc. WHERE TO LOOK? unfortunately not everything can be found in your local tower records, so where exactly do you look? great sources for buying tori rarities are the magazines, record collector (uk) and goldmine (us), not only do they contain private sellers' set sales and auctions, they also carry advertisements for many record stores and mail order companies with lists of their latest stock. these magazines also have information on various record & cd fairs, and these are worth visiting as they can be a great source for promo's and boots. of course the internet is an extremely useful tool in finding tori rarities. take a look the tori amos newsgroup (rec.music.tori-amos) for occasional sale ads that pop up, and there are various online auctions, such as e-bay and yahoo. be warned though, prices at auctions are often vastly inflated and this is not somewhere I would recommend buying. the best place to look is online... hunt through the ever growing number of online music stores. they range from the big names like cd now, to smaller specialised outfits like here. for a list of some stores that stock tori goods look at the list of online stores via the link on the left. HOW MUCH TO PAY? so how do you know how much to pay for a tori rarity? a great resource is the r.m.t-a price guide. compiled by regulars of the tori amos newsgroup it is an invaluable guide to the price of some of the many tori collectibles, and recently added to the site is a uk price guide which more reflects uk prices. i've also included some of the most expensive and some of the more affordable rarities here too, check them out in the rare tori and affordable tori sections.