A note of transparency first: this is a Groovilla Books title, and this page presents it rather than reviewing it. The book is out now as an ebook and in print — what follows is what it contains, and where to buy it.
The Grail Hunt: Europe is a travel guide for record collectors. Twenty European cities — London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Dublin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Prague, Rome, Milan, Bologna, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon — one chapter each: where that city's sound came from, which shops matter now, and how to walk between them.
Every chapter ends with the part the title is named after: the grails, the treasure records that city produced and where you go to find them. Each one carries its story, the real market price, and — the part that earns its place when you are holding the sleeve — how to spot the original pressing: catalogue numbers, run-out matrices, the SIAE stamp or the Depósito Legal, the sleeve details that separate a first press from a reissue.
Those records live online too. The full cards, with the links to hunt them down, are in the The Grail Hunt section of this site — and that is where the QR codes printed in the book lead: scan the code next to a grail and you land on its card, with Discogs and the second-hand market one tap away.
Where to find it. Print: Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Ebook: Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and on Payhip, sold direct (EPUB, no intermediaries).
Who it is for. For the traveller who already keeps a mental want list and would rather know, before leaving, which records are worth hunting in that city — and how to tell them from a reissue. Not a tourist guide with record shops in an appendix. The other way round.
