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40grand record

Back in the early days of Fleabay I mused over picking up a copy of the gold stripe DSOTM. They used to fetch 40-50 quid back in the day. Nearly 20 years ago, the one I was considering a bid on went for over 1200 quid.

There are German private pressings from the 70s of Prog/Psyche bands that are not even listed on Discogs and they fetch crazy money. I had one stolen 30 odd years ago during a move by a band called, I think Harlequin. The sleeve merely says Harlequin, so one assumes it was an eponymous titled album, double gate sleeve with a booklet, female fronted prog band from Germany. So far, I have found one German dealer who has heard of it yet, never seen a copy in the flesh. They made the point with regards to its value that, there's a couple of dozen "completists" out there who will buy anything from that German genre that was released in the 70s so you're talking about an auction with lots of bidders so who knows what it could fetch?

In a similar vein, if you have a Fleetwood Mac crew tour T shirt in pristine condition with the two penguins in a carnal embrace you looking at hundreds of bucks and the same goes for many big bands from that period. It's mad to think they didn't actually sell T Shirts as merchandise regularly until the very late 70s early 80s. Till then, they were extremely limited runs of 30 or so for the crew and band. The T Shirt from the "Wordsworth Benefit" at the Roundhouse circa 78, is worth at least a couple of hundred in decent nick as it's the only time Motorhead appeared as "Iron Fist And The Hordes From Hell".
 
My most valuable record is probably Paul Weller - ‘Days of speed’, £300-400 & I reckon it will only increase in value.

I am fortunate enough to have a lot of 90s-10s vinyl which seems to have a median value of £100. Some of the prices surprise me but I remember being roundly mocked for still buying LPs at the time.
 
Woodface said:
I am fortunate enough to have a lot of 90s-10s vinyl which seems to have a median value of £100.
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Annoyingly the 90s is when I was an IT contractor in That London, so for a couple of years I was moving around a lot running a very slimmed-down CD system, even just a CD Walkman for the start of it (my kit and records were boxed up at a friend’s house up north). As such I didn’t buy a huge amount of vinyl. I’ve got some (Mogwai, Leftfield, Boards Of Canada, Doves, Pulp, Gomez etc, plus some very nice audiophile stuff, DCC, Alto, Classic Records etc), but I mostly bought CDs at that point.

I then got disillusioned with new vinyl in the early 2000s as I went through a phase where everything I bought was warped, scratched, or both, and that’s before we get to stitching, infill etc. As a record dealer/obsessive collector I hate paying full price for something that doesn’t even make it to EX/EX when new. Just awful quality control at that point IMO. It is only fairly recently that I’ve got back to it as the quality seems way better now than it was 15 years back.
 
Tony L said:
Annoyingly the 90s is when I was an IT contractor in That London, so for a couple of years I was moving around a lot running a very slimmed-down CD system, even just a CD Walkman for the start of it (my kit and records were boxed up at a friend’s house up north). As such I didn’t buy a huge amount of vinyl. I’ve got some (Mogwai, Leftfield, Boards Of Canada, Doves, Pulp, Gomez etc, plus some very nice audiophile stuff, DCC, Alto, Classic Records etc), but I mostly bought CDs at that point.

I then got disillusioned with new vinyl in the early 2000s as I went through a phase where everything I bought was warped, scratched, or both, and that’s before we get to stitching, infill etc. As a record dealer/obsessive collector I hate paying full price for something that doesn’t even make it to EX/EX when new. Just awful quality control at that point IMO. It is only fairly recently that I’ve got back to it as the quality seems way better now than it was 15 years back.
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Exactly what happened with me & vinyl in that I became very peed off about the quality. Also, it was increasingly difficult to get the new releases I wanted.

Gomez & Doves vinyl has done well though. I also have The Beatles - ‘Let is be - naked’ which is right up there.
 
Boy, I do miss the days when records were just generally used things, of appeal only to a niche market of hard core record collectors, Luddites and weirdos. You would buy this stuff just to explore unfamiliar music and hidden gems and was none too precious about it.

Although I have a largish collection that has gone up in value, I detest the current fetishistic attraction to vinyl records and the ridiculous prices asked for and fetched by records, often acquired for bragging on Insta purposes and to quote Questlove, "a way to nuance their cool(ness)".

I generally ignore most 'collectible' records and grudgingly only pay for the records I really want. I focus my efforts more on buying stuff that's unfashionable and no one else thinks it's cool...
 
hockman said:
Boy, I do miss the days when records were just generally used things, of appeal only to a niche market of hard core record collectors, Luddites and weirdos. You would buy this stuff just to explore unfamiliar music and hidden gems and was none too precious about it.
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I was thinking about this yesterday scrolling through some Instagram posts of beautifully photographed trophy records. Like you I've always picked up cheap, interesting looking records just to see how they sound. You inevitably pick up a few clangers along the way but I've discovered loads of great music that way.

But now you can stream almost anything (and torrent what you can't!) I think a lot of folk are discovering music that way instead. So they aren't using their budget to buy a chunk of records to listen to, they're sinking it all into a small number of collectible releases.

I guess the good news is that the £1 bins are still full of good records that just don't tick all the boxes for some reason - suits me!
 
It’s always been about the music for me, never bought anything just because it was rare. I buy the odd bit of vinyl now, mostly second hand but CD has been my main format for ages now.
 
I buy both records and CDs and analog and digital replay in my system are roughly comparable. I've never really stopped buying records since my teenage years, save for a few years in the 1990s, when records became quite scarce. I am source-agnostic, and if the record is expensive or a typical reissue (in fact I eschew most audiophile reissues as well), I'd gladly take a decent CD version over the record anytime.

Woodface said:
It’s always been about the music for me, never bought anything just because it was rare. I buy the odd bit of vinyl now, mostly second hand but CD has been my main format for ages now.
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Intriguing...

If we go off sorting by the median value of any LP in my Discogs collection then surprisingly my original release copy of Donald Fagen's 'Kamakiriad' is top dog but not a huge value, if I sort by max value then its my original release copy of Pink Floyd's 'Animals' which I did buy just a few days after it came out. If I sort by min value then its Ian Brown's RSD2016 limited pressing of 'Solarized'. None of these get me closer to retirement, not that I'm wanting to sell. I think my kids hope some of the more recent signed LPs I have bought might appreciate in value but I do wonder if the vinyl resurrection will continue or fizzle out by the time they might profit from them.
 
Quite few probably worth £50-£200, but nothing more. White label UK test pressing of On The Beach, nice first UK press of Raw Power with the picture inner, First press Electric warrior with the poster, second Aussie press copies of the first 5 AC/DC album on Alberts Records.

It's a real shame that Brexit has made later nice European pressings of core classic rock stuff that bit more expensive, that's where a lot of my record budget went in the last couple of years and it was all great value. :-(
 
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