What's your Discogs collection value?

[Big Tabs]

As I have mentioned before, irrespective of value, you need to take notice of how many folks are interested or want the record or c.d. in question.

A record valued at £50 that only 4 people are interested in might sit there for decades unsold.

Also, I think a certain percentage indicate that they ‘want’ a particular release, but have no intention of ever purchasing it.
I do this myself, it is a useful way of observing how the price is moving for that particular release.

 

[Tony L]

It is complex and the median price, whilst useful, doesn’t take condition into account. Looking through the items listed for sale almost always shows that I’d personally not want the first handful at any price, and by the time one gets to what sounds like it might be something I’d grade as a strong EX/EX or NM (I favour the UK system) with no apologies then one tends to be in a pretty serious price category.

PS I really don’t like the US grading system as VG+ is far too wide. The UK system is too, but it does have more lower grades to jump. From my perspective as a collector geek I’m personally not interested in anything less than a strong EX/EX (I’ll list less than that in the shop as many folk aren’t anything like as picky as me). That means I really live in two grades only, EX and M. The US VG+ has led to many disappointing when I was buying some original jazz pressings from the USA. A lot of very over-graded stuff. FWIW I find buying vinyl from Japan far safer, I don’t think I have ever been disappointed with a purchase. Mostly under-graded to my mind. A Japanese VG+ seems to be a strong EX to my mind, whereas a US VG+ is about where I’d put it on the UK scale i.e. better than a ‘VG’ (which is junk from a picky audiophile perspective), but clearly not an EX. The minimum that has use to me.

 

[paulfromcamden]

I think the median value is probably the upper end of an 'insurance estimate' or roughly what it might cost to replace like with like, subject to supply and demand of course and assuming that you aren't in a huge hurry. The max values are usually specials e.g. autographed copies and the like.

I think it depends a bit on the issue. There will be loads of VG or worse grades of, say, a Ramsey Lewis LP on Argo from the sixties - so the median price might be what you'd expect to pay for a VG+ copy and max a NM. Something like a Tone Poet reissue is probably going to have plenty of minty copies available so you'd expect less variation in price.

 

[paulfromcamden]

As I have mentioned before, irrespective of value, you need to take notice of how many folks are interested or want the record or c.d. in question.

A record valued at £50 that only 4 people are interested in might sit there for decades unsold.

IME stuff that's worth proper money sells quickly. It's the cheap stuff that hangs around forever.

 

[gavreid]

I think it depends a bit on the issue. There will be loads of VG or worse grades of, say, a Ramsey Lewis LP on Argo from the sixties - so the median price might be what you'd expect to pay for a VG+ copy and max a NM. Something like a Tone Poet reissue is probably going to have plenty of minty copies available so you'd expect less variation in price.

Yes, I agree but averaged over most collections... If you're shifting a collection it's the rarer items that a dealer will cherry pick as payment for shifting the weaker items.

 

[Tony L]

Yes, I agree but averaged over most collections... If you're shifting a collection it's the rarer items that a dealer will cherry pick as payment for shifting the weaker items.

I agree to a degree, but again condition is everything. No dealer wants to have to deal with mediocre condition copies of Simply Red, Abba, Phil Collins, Billy Joel or other similar very high-selling albums that at one point you could fill a skip with at <50p a unit, but in genuinely mint condition they are not a hard sell now at all. These days pretty much any mint first press of any title has a decent chance of moving given a bit of time. Enough time has elapsed from the ‘70s and ‘80s now that finding really good copies of even quite common titles can be challenging, especially if they had hard card inners as so many did. Even sealed or unplayed NOS copies can look quite bruised if they have been sitting in a card inner for 40 years.

 

[gavreid]

I agree to a degree, but again condition is everything.

I fully agree.

Put it another way, nobody wants to buy a collection that has already been cherry picked unless it's at a real knock down price

I just tried a little experiment. If I remove the top 5% of my records by median value then the remaining value drops by 20%!

 

[Tony L]

I downloaded the Discogs app earlier with a view to gradually cataloguing the CDs (far more barcodes there!). I think what I’ll do with vinyl is to start adding all new stuff I buy or anything I pull out to research or play. It just seems too daunting to pull everything, especially given just so much of it predates barcodes.

 

[gavreid]

I downloaded the Discogs app earlier with a view to gradually cataloguing the CDs (far more barcodes there!). I think what I’ll do with vinyl is to start adding all new stuff I buy or anything I pull out to research or play. It just seems too daunting to pull everything, especially given just so much of it predates barcodes.

The barcodes don't always nail it entirely in my experience. The manufacturing plant and info on the discs themselves is usually needed too. I enjoyed doing mine over about 6 weeks or so but then I've only 1000 or so.

 

[Tony L]

I’ve only done the first chunk of the big box sets so far, e.g. the Miles collection, though the metal boxes don’t have barcodes so I needed to add those manually. I’m expecting it to get a lot more complex when I get to some of the really good early stuff upstairs, though much of that is pre-barcode like the vinyl.

Some bizarre findings e.g. of the three Schulze/Namlook Dark Side Of The Moog boxsets the first is worth lots, the other two very little. Why? You clearly need all three!

 

[forester]

I think the Discogs values are a good indicator of what you might need to pay to replace a collection, and therefore what you might want to insure it for. It soon follows that most home insurance doesn't cover a collection as standard and you need to have it as a named item, however this isn't necessarily expensive. I did find a stand alone LP insurance policy but it was about twice the price.

One good thing about the valuations is that word gets round and at least a few more people are aware of the potential worth of LP's and are therefore less likely to skip them.

 

[Tony L]

I’m up to £4k median value just with the rock and jazz CD box sets behind the right Tannoy!

 

[Big Tabs]

Slightly off topic -

One thing that I really like about Discogs is the database aspect, on a worldwide level.

I enjoy adding photographs of records that have no current image for their entry. Also adding snippets of detail that add to the information available for a release.

I have added new complete entries to Discogs, but that takes me days sometimes, makes my head hurt.

I did comment on pfm recently about adding the category ’Hip Hop’ to the release Herbie Hancock ’Rockit.’
Most pleasing.
And very topical on pfm at the moment

 

[Tony L]

One tip for entering audiophile stuff that I’m finding works pretty well is going by label, e.g. it is far easier picking through the DCC, Classic Records, Supercut etc catalogues than say trying to find the Nimbus Supercut of Wish You Were Here or Kind Of Blue out of 400 odd versions. I did the same with Factory and likely will with a few others.

PS £9.5k median now, and I’ve barely started, though I do have a fair bit of the highest price stuff in now.

 

[Big Tabs]

One tip for entering audiophile stuff that I’m finding works pretty well is going by label, e.g. it is far easier picking through the DCC, Classic Records, Supercut etc catalogues than say trying to find the Nimbus Supercut of Wish You Were Here or Kind Of Clue out of 400 odd versions.

I sometimes start with the matrices, especially with c.d’s.

 

[Tony L]

I sometimes start with the matrices, especially with c.d’s.

That’s a good tip. I’m expecting the upstairs CD collection to be pretty hard as I have a lot of early Japanese, full-silver West German, ‘targets’, blue-face Virgin etc etc that the barcodes (if they even have them) may fail to identify.

 

[Tony L]

I’ve committed to doing this now even though it is going to take a bloody eternity and is surprisingly knackering work. I’ve now done all the CD box sets, the RCA and Living Presence SACDs (they were in a pile and easy to get to) and started on the vinyl. I did the audiophile labels and Factory from memory, and tonight started on the top shelf of the rock and pop vinyl proper. It took a couple of hours to get through A & B (about 14-15”), so some nice Amon Düül, Aphex Twin, Bowie etc. The bigger the artist the harder it is by far, e.g. there are just hundreds of versions of the Bowie albums, and I wanted to get it right. The obscure indie stuff is pretty straightforward as there tends only to be one pressing for a lot of it.

Current stats 461 items added, median value £14.8k, max £26.6k! The prices are fascinating, a lot of stuff I know I could get comfortably more than the median for, some stuff just crazy over what I’d ask for it. It looks like my guess at £30 an item average wasn’t too far off the mark, though that may drop a bit as there is some very nice stuff in already (e.g. the audiophile vinyl), but there is tons of good stuff left to do.

 

[Hook]

Had planned to sell my whole CD collection at once, but now I’m thinking of pulling out the more expensive ones for individual sale. Only way to know for sure what to pull out is to catalog them in Discogs.

I think I might get a second login for my CDs. I really don’t want them mixed in with my vinyl records.

 

[Tony L]

Looks like you can allocate folders for categories or whatever you like. I’ve not done this, so everything is mixed in ‘uncategorised’ at present. I’ve no idea if you can batch move by format or whatever. I could really do with learning how it works!

 

[Big Tabs]

I’ve committed to doing this now even though it is going to take a bloody eternity and is surprisingly knackering work. I’ve now done all the CD box sets, the RCA and Living Presence SACDs (they were in a pile and easy to get to) and started on the vinyl. I did the audiophile labels and Factory from memory, and tonight started on the top shelf of the rock and pop vinyl proper. It took a couple of hours to get through A & B (about 14-15”), so some nice Amon Düül, Aphex Twin, Bowie etc. The bigger the artist the harder it is by far, e.g. there are just hundreds of versions of the Bowie albums, and I wanted to get it right. The obscure indie stuff is pretty straightforward as there tends only to be one pressing for a lot of it.

Current stats 461 items added, median value £14.8k, max £26.6k! The prices are fascinating, a lot of stuff I know I could get comfortably more than the median for, some stuff just crazy over what I’d ask for it. It looks like my guess at £30 an item average wasn’t too far off the mark, though that may drop a bit as there is some very nice stuff in already (e.g. the audiophile vinyl), but there is tons of good stuff left to do.

Over the years I have tried to list stuff as I play it which makes the task less ominous.
New items I try and list immediately.
I do have a pile of stuff that has no listing yet - those are the items that take ages for me to do.
I have found that I can do the bare minimum of a new listing and someone else will come along and do the more complicated stuff that I don’t understand. Crediting all the musicians etc. is a pain. Adding images though is simple and a positive thing to do.