price guide books

How useful are the price guides published by Goldmine and Record Collector now that there's so many online resources? Between Discogs' sales history and Popsike, I think I'm able to get a good sense of a record's value. Do published guides just help fill in gaps? Or are they ever more accurate than what's online?

 

I don't use price guides for values (except for laughs).

But I love to have a couple of price guides under the listening chair so that I can easily check what year an LP was first issued and whether my LP Label guide then suggests that I've got a first-label, original-issue LP.

 

You have to take them with a big grain of salt, but if you can get them cheap (which you can) they can be useful for comparisons in areas or artists you're not familiar with. I don't have them any more, but the Canfield guides to classical records taught me a lot about what was worth more than something else that looks pretty much the same. But Popsike/collectorsfrenzy/discogs sold listings are far more useful for prices from the last couple of years.

 

I used to have the Goldmine guides (pre-internet).
But they were more useful to me for showing me what was out there, then they were as actual price guides.
I don't think I paid much attention to the prices.
I used local record conventions to gauge that.


Darryl

 

I agree with what people have said so far. They can be really useful for detailing catalog numbers, variations and other details...for prices they're best thought of as 'guides' as their titles suggest. I've found guide prices all over the map -- from way over price, way under price, sometimes about right...You really have to use a variety of sources to come anywhere near target. I've found Popsike -- which tracks eBay sales -- pretty good, but even so, there are all kinds of ups and downs for who knows what reason. And when you get a rarity that hasn't come up for sale in a long time, it can be anyone's guess. Higher due to rarity? Lower due to lack of interest? Who knows.

 

Nobody. It will be worth what you can get for it, if you want to sell it. But having a printed source say "Red label $200+, Yellow label $10" is useful information you can double check elsewhere.

 

Not for prices in particular, but for knowing which pressing is more desirable is useful. Which label and cover variation etc. is (or once was) desirable can't hurt to know.

Interesting thing I saw in the Goldmine guide is that the Epic label reissue was priced higher than the original pressing for one obscure LP which I own both of. Might have been an error / misprint on that one, rather than a botched appraisal.

 

So many of my purchases in past years were imports, boots, and oddball things, many times not included in a US record guide.

 

I seem to remember reading that when there were two main competing US price guides that one or the other (or both) occasionally introduced deliberate errors or listings for records that did not actually exist to see if the other would plagiarize them. I know I was surprised when the first modern price guide to paperback books came out that some of the hardest to find rarities, like Jim Thompson Lion originals, were listed way cheap. When the second edition came out the prices had jumped to way higher than they were in the real world. I guess the compiler (who was also a dealer) got his copies cheap from the unaware who were using his first book.

 

Prices for used media is like any commodity. Would you invest in wheat based on a ten year old newspaper article? Even as a list for possible pressings,books are filled with info of limited value.