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

Definitely not for what I would consider peanuts, but I've seen classic U2, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, and Springsteen titles in Bay Area record stores recently for what I would consider OK prices ($10-20 or sometimes less). In absolutely pristine condition perhaps they'd be more, but I'm talking about totally acceptable play copies.

Of course all this stuff would have been much cheaper 20 years ago, but these prices are pretty typical of any music that people still care about at this point. And those artists all sell for a lot less than Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc.

 

Thank you. I have 52 jazz LPs - all from the 50's and 60's (but I have a Bill Frisell LP from 2020!). Mostly the usual suspects: Miles, Coltrane, Mingus, Mulligan, Blakey, Brubeck, Grant Green, Bill Evans, Getz/Gilberto. It's a good group of records but I think it stops at 1966! I need to move on to the next 15 years!!!!!

 

As were just discussing with regards to New Order (and the Smiths, another example), variations among different countries’ versions of certain records persisted well into the 80s.

 

Yeah, these days I'm not seeing the first four U2 LPs priced lower than $20; they all seem to start there (provided they're in decent, playable condition). Classic Peter Gabriel LPs seem to be around $12–$15, depending on condition. Back in the early '00s, U2 and Peter Gabriel LPs were super easy to find in the dollar bins here in pristine condition. Even five, six, seven years ago, you could still find LPs by both artists in good condition for maybe $8–$10. So, the prices we're seeing today might be "OK prices," as you describe them, relatively speaking, but the price increase has still been fairly significant.

 

I have scored so many of the titles being discussed here for $5.00 and under just in the last 5 years...I feel lucky

 

Yeah that all makes sense. My point was just that those particular artists are still pretty affordable, in today's market, when you compare them to other (broadly speaking) classic rock acts who have gone up in value. There are of course other artists/bands whose albums haven't gone up in value much if at all, so I'd put people like Springsteen in the middle of the pack--definitely pricier now than a decade or two ago, but the price jump hasn't been nearly as much as some of his contemporaries.

With Paul Simon I'm not sure. I found Graceland with NM vinyl at Amoeba Berkeley maybe 2 years ago for $8, and that seemed like a good deal. That's one I could see going either way, going up considerably in price or not.

 

I had one dealer tell me he was getting $20 for common Journey titles, items he couldn't force people to buy 10 years ago for $7.

 

Agreed, but always preferred the back cover picture.

 

It's like the mono "Oher Side" The Doors, I picked up for $20 bucks a few weeks ago. All circumstance, baby.

 

I checked discogs for the Tracy Chapman debut LP and...I was shocked.

Looks like you can't get a nice copy for less than €20. Not to open a can of worms, but it was a digital recording, so the old DDD compact disc is fine.

 

Journey is one that SHOULD be worth more—they shat all over their catalog with SO many bad mastering songs digital…

not to mention, that what you’re seeing here is people who are NOT part of the hipster music army getting into vinyl ….Journey is literally one of the most beloved pop groups in history.

 

They usually go pretty quick around here.
I do enjoy Ludwig's Raised on Radio and the old Wally Next. The rest I'm good with the old mastering's and pre-emphasis discs.
Unfortunately some of their albums no amount of mastering will fix the recording's themselves (Frontiers)

 

Stepping back to the bigger picture, I just don’t find $20 for a mint copy of any remotely desirable 60s or 70s, or even 80s, pop/rock title that “shocking.” Sure, in the late 90s/early 2000s, we got used to paying $4 or $5 for nice copies of Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, or Tracy Chapman records, but was that going to last forever? Obviously not, as noted before, they’re not making any more copies of vintage first pressings of records, and the pool of clean copies of any sought-after title in circulation is always shrinking as copies get thrown out by widows or widowers and other copies get snatched up by new generations of collectors.

Last week at my local shop I paid $20 for a mint copy of Stevie Wonder’s Fulfillingness’s First Finale, the only major Stevie album of the 70s I’ve never had a copy of on vinyl. A decade ago I probably could have picked up that same record for between $2 and $7, but times change, and to pick up a mint copy of a quality 70s album in 2022 for $20 really isn’t that much more than the album originally cost in real dollars, when you factor in inflation. If U2’s War retailed for $8.98 new in 1983, that’s roughly $30 in today’s money. Even if you got the album on sale for $6.98 when it was new, that’s about $20 in today’s money. To be able to pick up a mint original copy of that album today for $20 is a relative bargain, when you stop and think about it. But some people seem to expect that the crazy low prices of the great vinyl liquidation of 1991-2000 ought to last forever.

 

late 90s-early 00s I bought Rough Trade pressings of The Queen is dead, Strangeways and Rank still sealed for the equivalent of €2.5

Same for U2; the most expensive one was "Rattle and Hum", paid the equivalent of approximately €3.5. Never listened to it but I have no intention to sell that one, or even a single vinyl album that I own.

 

Al used vinyl prices surprise me especially the obscure crap, common titles that sold millions and recent titles that are not OOP and awaiting a repress.

 

Once, in about twenty years have I come across a Smiths title around here. Very rare in my parts.

 

As pointed out stacks of copies out there as well as current pressings. Absolutely no justification for current prices. I find it hard to believe that every vinyl collector in the world hasn't already got a copy of Rumours and DSOTM. Rarer specialist pressings of these are a different matter.

 

See, this is like Billy Joel for me. People keep telling me certain artists are now selling for big bucks, but I've seen them in shops and online recently for relatively cheap prices. Maybe if we're talking pristine NM copies I could see them going for close to $20, but for the most part this just doesn't match my experience.

 

I don't know in the US, but in Europe the problem isn't the amount of copies available, it's the prices! This "new vinyl is hip" phase. Many people are buying vinyl but we know there are many problems with new stuff, often badly pressed/noisy. I'm not talking about mastering.

I was a kid in the 80s - most vinyl albums were perfect, even the "nice price" reissues. I have several CBS Holland LPs - all silent. The WEA Europe reissues (exclamation mark in yellow circle) - silent.

New releases were generally outstanding - I have a copy of Prince's Batman made in the USA that I listened to only many years later on vinyl - a triumph. Prefab Sprout, Depeche Mode, R.E.M., The Cure, Everything But The Girl.

I have a hard time remembering a defective 80s pressed vinyl.

A relative of mine bought a turntable recently and is purchasing a lot of newly pressed vinyl after buying some vintage albums over the years following my advice.
I won't talk about the kind of TT, but I will say that I get sick whenever I'm told "I played this or that, yesterday". Those LPs are being...raped...

These vintage 80's albums that are being sold nowadays are likely to be destroyed by cheap "hip" turntables..

 

Used to see it frequently out here at Freakbeat in the used section where I bought mine for $5-7.

 

The price that Rumours changes hands for today is not simply a personal affront to your sense of what the album “ought” to sell for, it’s a reflection of supply and demand.

And I find it hard to believe that anyone can’t grasp that there are millions of vinyl collectors born after 1980 who didn’t have a chance to buy these warhorses when they were new releases. My twenty-something buddy at work was streaming “Echoes” on his phone the other night. Finding a copy of Dark Side of the Moon, whether a reissue or an OG copy, at the local record shop is new and exciting to him. The inability of Boomer record collectors to put themselves in the shoes of people born after them is truly staggering.

 

I agree with this. $20 (or euros or lbs.) isn't unreasonable for many titles by today's standards. It surprises me that so many in this thread are using that as an example of "over-priced" when it's not uncommon to see desirable (and playable) LP's going for $50+ online. Rush, Black Sabbath and AC/DC to name just a couple of examples.

It is true however that prices can vary due to geographical location and some may be finding them cheaper at local record stores.

 

It really isn’t unreasonable for a clean copy of a vintage album that is now forty years old. But, again, people got spoiled when 98% of the listeners in the world liquidated their vinyl collections in the 90s, and there was a glut of used records on the market and an all-time low amount of people with working turntables to play those records. As time takes its inevitable toll on the number of surviving clean copies of vintage records, and more and more young people today own turntables and become interested in records, it’s only natural that prices of used records will rise. And $20 for a nice vintage record really isn’t crazy. I see individual issues of 70s Marvel comics I bought off the spinner rack as child for twenty cents or a quarter selling for hundreds or even thousands of dollars on eBay and think “thank God” that the prices of used records haven’t gone insane like that.

 

I'd like to believe they are being picked up by new collectors as starter copies, that's how I started out at least. There are some albums that I've upgraded at least 3 times and there's a lot of albums I've just tossed in the trash as they would be of no use to any decent turntable. But yeah, there are collectors who do it mainly to own the artifect.