Second hand record prices rising well over inflation?

I'll also add to my original post and why some places seem to be charging a lot more for used records. As I said the store I shop at has been in business since 1984, he bought the record store he was working at and was set up already. After a few years he moved to a larger store front on the same street.

His main thing is to move records he bought so prices are pretty low compared to other stores in the area. After over 35 years in selling used records he knows what works. Better off selling in volume with lower prices than trying to get exorbitant prices and sitting on records. Some people mention record stores with their high priced records on the wall, he does not have that at all. He knows his customers so if gems come in he strait up offers the records as he sees them.

I come in all the time and he'll show me something special and give me a price. The price is not top dollar collector prices pulled from the internet, he might show me eBay sales going for $100-$150 and say he needs $50 for it. Or if he has a group of rare records he might pull them out and say look at these. He could say you can have them all for $500, I could buy them and come home checking out internet prices and three out of the stack of 10 will sell for the $500 I spent.

He also does not sell online, I wouldn't go to a store that does that. If I'm a local patron to a local store, I want to see and be able to buy the gems that come into the store at a fair price. If a store is taking all their best used stock and selling it online there is no need for me to support them. Witch also means I will not be buying all the new records I do there, most new records cost me a bit more than shopping online. But I don't mind supporting a store in this way if they can give me deals on the used stuff coming in.

He doesn't price records from online sales, he has a general price for common records which is about 95% of the records that come into the store. These prices stay very consistent year over year. If new records are starting to pop in price because they are now OOP, they are still prices at retail in the racks. He might even say you better get this, it's the last ones I'll be getting. While he used to collect records, and still has a very special collection, he doesn't look at records like a collector does. He's been selling records for so long it's a job and not a hobby, it's better for him to get his investment back, than to look at the record any other way than inventory.

This is what I see as a new trend in record store owners, owners that might have started their business in the last 10 years or so.

They are collectors and trying to sell records with a collector mentality, and turning their hobby into a storefront business.

They treat their inventory as their collection, they look online and come up with a price for each record. They baby and package records up, hanging them on the wall with prices that are not really meant to move out the door. They try and get the same prices for records that online sales may bring in. They have no quam selling their best records online and not even give their local patrons a fair shot first at what comes into the store.

For me this is not a record store I would ever support, it's just not, why should I? or you?

 

Great post! I agree completely.

 

yeah, all you stupid people who are under 30, why can't you just be happy with the cheap records you bought when you weren't alive?

 

bummer. i'm still seeing basically the same used prices in the greater seattle area.

 

(dick swinging)

 

Another under-discussed factor is how Discogs has standardized used vinyl prices. Used to be some shops were much more expensive than others and over time they've reverted to the mean. Most shops are "Discogs median price + $5" or thereabouts, you can see the influence of that number on pricing (not to mention that most used shops also sell on Discogs).

 

Show of hands: how many people in this thread are under 30?

The vast majority of this thread is Boomers and aging Xers (raises hand) complaining that records aren't as cheap as they used to be. To which I say "No kidding. Let's enjoy what we bought back then."

Those of you who weren't around in the mid 90s to scoop up the serious bargains...it sucks, I get it. But those times aren't coming back.

Hell, I'm still bummed that I was born in 1969 and therefore just missed the wholesale blowout of over a decade's worth of mono LPs at 20 cents apiece.

 

These threads are typically b**mers complaining about prices which is what I was referring to. But you know that.

 

No they are generally cheapskates complaining about prices, I find that’s an equal opportunity for whining and age has nothing to do with being cheap.

 

Man, what an insightful thread. Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

Yes. Inflation and market trends have caused used record stores to raise prices. Inflation affects the cost of staffing, and overhead. Market trends affect price levels. Consider that it is ridiculously easy for a person to sell a collection online vs accepting a dealer's pennies on the dollar offer. So dealers are competing for collections. On the other side, there are more buyers than before, and new buyers are coming into the market each day. All are buying records. Just about any astute seller will try to take advantage of an increase in demand. As for online sales, most dealers have to go online if only to be sure they receive the best price for a rare item. The owner of a prominent NYC store relayed the dynamics to me a long time ago: he could have a rare and high value LP on the store that is subject to numerous lookers. There is a risk of damage each time the LP is handled. It could take a few weeks for the right buyer to come in and pay FMV for the LP. Or he can put it online and have the proceeds in his bank account within a few days. Easy decision. Smart dealers straddle the line- they can call a select list of likely buyers if they bring in a rare or high value LP. If it sells that way- great. If not, put it online.

 

This. I stopped setting up at the two local record fairs because people just don't what to pay anything for records that are actually worth something.

 

What about the prices..?

 

A record is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

 

I've two vinyl jukeboxes for which I occassionally buy vintage records mostly from eBay, occasionally Discogs. For any choice, there's always a few options. Prices range from very reasonable to stupidly expensive. I've not noticed that anything has actually changed much in a couple of decades.

 

That's because the market for both 45s and 12" singles has bottomed out, no matter the era. Very few buyers today for either. Which is nice for me because I love 45s -- the single, not the LP, is the building block of pop music -- and I love that they're still relatively inexpensive.

 

There are stickers showing up on gasoline pumps in service stations around the country these days that say “I did that”.

Prices of everything are going up, especially petroleum products

During the Oil embargo the factories switched over to thinner, recycled vinyl to save on oil imports

 

IMHO Discogs and eBay are somewhat responsible for at least some of this.

It used to be used record stores just priced albums based upon what they "thought" they were worth.

Now I know of no used record store that doesn't check Discogs and eBay for recently sold pricing first. (Which makes sense, as it used to be the case that people would frequent stores that didn't and would buy and flip albums, like the way it is with Record Store Day releases now.)

Of course limited editions have always been pricy; the price for a used copy of the 45 RPM Analogue Productions A Charlie Brown Christmas and the MoFi One Step of The Nightfly both shot up to over $500 immediately after they sold out.

 

right, and same records sold within a few days online for the prices I wanted.

 

I would agree with those who say now is the time to sell, if this were meant as an investment. This may be the peak. I can’t bring myself to part with anything though and they weren’t purchased as an investment.

I’m glad I acquired the bulk of my collection before this all started for around $3 apiece. I only wish I’d started sooner.

 

Cool..that tells me you found someone who agreed with your pricing.
You did good, my friend

 

no, it's a sad state of how disconnected from reality many customers are/were. It's the same reason I stopped booking local shows - everybody wants to pay the same cover they did for a show 20 or 25 years ago. The fact that the records sold immediately online shows that the prices were more than reasonable.

 

This may be the only store in the country, operating like this. Stores need to mark as high as possible, as costs (all of them, from buying lunch for your employees to paying for that green dumpster, 90% of the records , a store buys used, ends up in)

 

I think we might be past the peak, if we’re talking about regular records. I’ve definitely noticed more price shyness this year than the last two. My Discogs sales have slowed to a crawl, and things aren’t automatically selling for a little more than the previous top price anymore. The max value of my collection is creeping downward as new sales edge out older ones. Lots of stuff in my wantlist is being repeatedly resisted at lower prices and sticking around longer. I might even be able to afford some of it eventually!

for the record (ha!) I think this is a good thing. Although as a dealer I largely benefit from high prices and a hot market, I also lament the loss of accessibility for this hobby over the past couple years. I think dropping prices could bring some of the fun back into it.

now, I don’t think the record market is going to crash altogether. Prices for hard-to-get items will remain high, and top prices for highly collectible rarities will probably keep climbing. We’re unlikely to see records ever return to the lows of the 90s and early 00s, short of a global catastrophe. But we might be seeing the market begin to level out a bit.

 

Time was when all that most stores had to go on was a Goldmine price guide, usually several years out of date. I only started collecting at the very last gasp of that era unfortunately.