Recent used vinyl price increases: what are the most surprising titles?

I bought a MFSL gold CD of Aja for $2 from a guy selling CDs off of a card table on Broadway and 72nd on the Upper West Side, but he does not have a website.

 

That's the CDR guy who runs when the cops arrive?

 

or pretty much any Sparks release, if you can even find them. Can’t count the number of Sparks albums I flipped through in $1 bins.

Oingo Boingo, also. Cheap bins used to be filled with their records. I don’t think record stores could give away Danny Elfman’s So-Lo back in the day. Now, it’s an $80 record.

 

Possibly region dependent. In 20 years I've only come across two Sparks title locally. The Zentz/Bellman cut of No.1 and the Red promo Introducing. I'd love to find Terminal.

 

Certain late 80’s albums are the strange former $1 bin records that now seem to be becoming the top of new collector’s most wanted lists. I first noticed it with New Order’s Substance. Then the whole mania around Tracy Chapman’s S/T became the big thing. The newest one that I see a ton of people clamoring for is Van Halen’s 5150.

 

The more recent LPs by The Fall seem to have gone up in value, even the expanded CD reissues from the 2000s are getting pricey.

 

Substance is out of control.
And the 86/88 VH's along with Substance (imo) don't offer anything special due to the format they're on.

 

Are you referring to how they sound on vinyl?

 

Yes.

 

One of my lucky day thrift store finds a few years back was the XTC Oranges and Lemons double LP. Yes, I remember going to the best chain record store in my town Camelot Music after Christmas 1988 and they had removed nearly all of their vinyl, after having a big selection as recently as a few weeks earlier. Pretty much all the stores I visited did the same.

 

What's the 2nd Edie album going for? It's pretty rare (and good). I think I paid like $12 pre-covid and only seen it once ever.

 

Reign in Blood has always been rare. Must not have made many of them, or fans don't part with it. Only seen it once like 10 years ago for $25 and passed because the jacket was pretty beat up (record was nice).

 

If Substance was EVER a $1 bin record, it certainly hasn't been that way in the last decade.
I got back into vinyl around 2010, and I snagged most of the NO catalog for between $7 and $10, U.S. pressings. Never once spotted Substance though. Maybe around 2013-14, I finally snagged my current copy when our used vinyl guy set it aside for me. It was about $30 back then. (To put that in perspective, 2013 was when you could still buy every Zeppelin record for under $10 and MoFi was having to discount most of their "top tier" $30 titles to sell through them after a year or so!)

So I'm not remotely surprised that a hard-to-find 2LP set that went for $30 a decade ago is now going for close to $200, with still no reissue in sight.

(FYI that's the common factor driving a lot of these price increases.... If the label refuses to do ANY vinyl reissue, even a cruddy digital transfer, then used vinyl is the only option. That's why 5150 is gonna be way more pricey than the DLR Van Halens, which have very good new reissues available for $25 apiece. Ditto Tracy Chapman and several others mentioned here.)

 

In 2020 I upgraded my Countdown to a NM ABC "block labels" press, sounds amazing. That was $18 on Discogs.
In 2021 I upgraded my AB Aja to a more NM copy for $20, again on Discogs.
So there's still deals out there, you just gotta be patient.
(Also got a great black label CBAT here on the Classifieds in 2021 as well, but I think that was closer to $45. Well worth it tho.)

 

That's about what it's worth if you ask me... Not a great sounding disc that one.

 

any Moody Blues record over $5



For a loooong time, they were one of the few classic rock bands whose albums remained a bargain.

 

The post 2000 Fall albums were all pressed in very small numbers to begin with, IWS was 1000 copies for example.

 

Certainly Sunstance hasn’t been in discount bing in quite awhile. It was there at one point. I picked up mine in an old store that Rasputin’s in the Bay Area set up for their overflow records. It was five records for a $1. A huge store that was packed to the gills. I picked up my Substance there and so did my roommate and he nailed it to his wall. Of course this was way back in 2002.
Definitely it’s the lack of reissues for these late 80’s albums that are causing the skyrocketing prices but all three were very common mass produced albums that have a ton of copies out there. It’s more what makes the three I listed be examples of such high prices. There are tons of other albums from that same period that still can be had for cheap. It’s just interesting to see which albums suddenly become insanely desired.

 

I’m pretty sure 5150 was recorded and mixed analog.

 

I've seen it featured in a few articles around the topic of 'the albums that sound best on vinyl', which seems to make it a must-have for people new to the hobby (and there are a lot of people new to the hobby at the moment). These articles are aimed at newcomers and don't get into the world of One-Steps or UHQR etc.

 

Yes it was!
But I found the old disc 'rock'd better than the LP. It was more laid back. -Different presentation.

 

A signed copy just sold for a premium earlier this week!

Kate Bush Hounds of Love Cassette Running Up That Hill Stranger Things Signed | eBay

 

Agree with everyone saying Tracy Chapman S/T.

Another one that’s spiked is the standard Reprise pressing of Joni’s Blue. Used to be a $25 record that was somewhat harder to find than her others but rarely commanded a high price. Seeing that around $65-70 on the wall here. Funniest part is about every local store has had one on their wall in the past year, so how rare is it really? I think both of these are suffering inflated value because reissues aren’t readily available. Personally at those prices I’d advise anyone in the market to just pony up for the Hoffman/Gray Rhino which sounds so much better.

 

I can attest to that myself. I don't recall seeing an OG copy of Reign in Blood other than one time I came across at my city's local record show and I nabbed it the instance I saw it, though it was quite pricey about 12-13 years ago.

I was able to nab a bunch of New Order albums before prices went up, including two copies of Low Life in NM/NM condition with the original onion skin and another with an obi-style strip intact. The DLP Substance compilation is a unicorn out in the field so I wound up buying a used copy through eBay from a UK seller, which was somewhat pricey back then.