The Dutch charity shops have a lot of immemorable stuff though, as you said - a lot of classical (dime a dozen), Dutch artists, German stuff, and the well known pop artists. But never anything rare.
You don't find anything rare because the volunteers at those charity shops get first dibs on everything (officially or no), and the shops themselves do; they will pick out the good record and either flog them on ebay or whatever, or move them to a more upmarket shop where the name changes from a charity shop but a vintage or antique shop.
I never expect to find anything valuable or collectable at a charity shop anymore. I mean besides the staff, there will always be people scouring it at all hours of the day looking for collectibles.
The other one there is house clearings; in some cases, when someone dies with no relatives or nobody interested, they'll hire a house clearing service, who also get first dibs on anything valuable or collectable. The rest is sold in either their own shops or sent to a charity shop.
It's not always that bad (though often); it depends on the shop. Rummage sales are better: the people organising them tend to not filter out books or records as a rule (church rummage sales in particular are good), because those things were donated explicitly for the purpose of selling them for some benefit, and reselling second hand stuff isn't their core business anyway.
Still waiting for that chance… It's niche enough that it won't automatically be taken out, like a Beatles record, but still famous enough that a lot of folk would grab it and head over to the volunteer manning the cash tin, red-faced with shame and stammer: “So uhm, €0,75 / 50p / 75¢ per record, right?”.
I would be looking over my shoulder all the way home to make sure I got away with it. :)
I don't think you're missing anything except for maybe that (1) I'm in the Netherlands, (2) a million of these were pressed, many of them low quality (this is fairly common with high volume records, essentially there was a strong incentive to run the negatives past their 'best before' date to meet production quota spending as little money as possible because the occasional million seller was a real money maker for the record companies), (3) that what lists VG/VG may not be the same thing once you get your hands on it and that sending records of unknown audio quality or issue internationally is always a bit of a gamble. So I was very happy to find a very good quality early pressing for pennies. The state of the sleeve left me doubtful about the state of the record but it is as good as it gets.
Interesting tidbit I had held on to a record player for years to be able to digitize LPs, finally got rid of it (and the nice audio card that I used because it was no longer compatible with recent motherboards) and sure enough, within a year I find a whole slew or extremely rare Dinu Lipatti LPs and EPs (which have since gone to a pianist who also frequents HN because I think his is by far the better home for these) and that Wendy Carlos record as well as some other really nice ones. So I doubt I will ever play it, but still I'm super happy to have found it.
Looking at the Discogs offering now, I must say that I do see a surprising number of sellers in the Netherlands for this specific record, a number even offering near-mint condition. I did expect the usual problem of "$X plus $35 shipping and lots of annoyances with customs", but it seems to be much better than I expected.
Possibly remastered (so different sound), possibly much later negatives made from the positive (positives wear too, a positive master for a million seller is a very precious thing (see below)). Far less valuable. Usually much thinner than the earlier ones so more prone to warping if not stored very nicely.
And if you're very unlucky it was made through an intermediary set of positive/negative.
You don't find anything rare because the volunteers at those charity shops get first dibs on everything (officially or no), and the shops themselves do; they will pick out the good record and either flog them on ebay or whatever, or move them to a more upmarket shop where the name changes from a charity shop but a vintage or antique shop.
I never expect to find anything valuable or collectable at a charity shop anymore. I mean besides the staff, there will always be people scouring it at all hours of the day looking for collectibles.
The other one there is house clearings; in some cases, when someone dies with no relatives or nobody interested, they'll hire a house clearing service, who also get first dibs on anything valuable or collectable. The rest is sold in either their own shops or sent to a charity shop.