This one is quite amazing. It got pricey pretty fast. But look at it now: The Stranglers - Giants Not bad for a 19€ album, eh?
For years I had James 7 in my cart on discogs for £4.99 but never got around to buying it. Now I’d be lucky to find it for under £25
I own that LP, bought it when it came out for £20 or whatever the price for a standard new album was. The price rise has indeed been surprising, although mine is not a signed version.
I have it too, bought in Hamburg in a small store that had multiple copies. It's a good album and I love the artwork so I won't be putting it on the market anytime soon.
I think this is showing a difference between artists who are popular and artists whose popularity has also become a big cult. Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin (high prices) have that whereas Deep Purple (average prices) don't. If you pick your artists you can do OK - Elton John, 10CC and Boston albums still go pretty cheap.
I can't see newbies paying high prices for the originals when there is a reasonably priced reissue. Most don't care if a digital source or not. For those more picky the Hoffman / Gray repress of Rumours won't cost a lot more.
UK first presses of LZ (plum) and Black Sabbath (Vertigo Swirl) were expensive when most records were around £5. More like £60-£80 rather than up to several hundred pounds now. Collectables always remained pricey unless you found people offloading collections that didn't know the values. The problem is we have gone from people thinking most records are worthless to most sellers thinking they are all worth quite a lot irrespective of condition. Also inflated Discogs values continue to be taken as a guide price (maximum sold for rather than median).
This seems hilarious now, but in the mid nineties, I'd often buy a new release on vinyl rather than CD simply because it was cheaper. I'm not a format fetishist, so I always tried to get as much bang for my buck. So typical indie-type releases, like Pavement records, for instance, were $14 on vinyl and $18 on CD. Crazy days. This is an example of what I'll call Howard Bleach's Law: CD prices are dirt cheap except for the ones by artists and labels I collect. There is too much evidence of this for it to be a coincidence. The universe knows how much I love the Dead, Coil, ECM, UK 90s ambient / techno, and dub, and prices on the used market reflect this. I suspect you are right and this is a fascinating phenomenon. The same people who will line up at RSD to buy a $30 reissue of a common record would never buy that same record for even half that price in NM (or even sealed!!) condition if they found it in the used bin. This boggles the mind.
Back in the day, there was a Buzzcocks "Product" box set, all three albums plus one "extras" and one "Singles Going Steady", all in strong sleeves, lovely. That was the LP version, which I think was £34 or thereabouts. The CD version was three discs, the first with two albums, the second with the third and "Singles Going Steady" with all the tracks that were on the albums, removed (!) and the third was the "Extras" set. I believe that one was £44. So, I obviously bought the LP box, and it sounds great, mastering fans. I did eventually buy the CD version for £12 second hand. I had it for about 10 years before realising the scribbly indentations were where the band had leaned on the box while signing the booklet!
John Martyn- London Conversation (UK Island 1967). His first, pretty straight acoustic folk-blues, by no means poor but far from his best and far from the eclectic folk-jazz-rock-Eastern-pop blend for which he’s remembered. The first press on the ‘eye’ pink Island label has always commanded a premium but a G state copy fetched £150 on the ‘bay recently and even later reissues are being sold for £50+. I’ve had to wait a couple of years to bag one at a non-silly price. His second, The Tumbler, a considerably better album, again first press on the ‘eye’ label, hasn’t increased in price anything like as much…
That first album, my dad had it. apparently, he was visiting the recording studio when they recorded it - friends of friends or something. I still have it, sleeve is a bit worn, the album is pretty much unplayed...
I saw Paul Young's album No Parlez in the used album section of my local record shop, going for €3.99 A year ago you could've picked it up for closer to €2.99
The problem is I keep seeing Crosleys all the time! They also make this one with anti skate but nobody I know owns it For beginners its not important spending a fortune, but at least purchasing a model with anti skate and a stilus that can be replaced. The Music Hall turntables that you suggested are a great option indeed.
Yeah - starting around 1984 (in the US) cassettes were outselling vinyl units - at least according the RIAA charts out there. Thereafter, the CD started eating into its numbers as well. I could be wrong, but I feel like cassettes were primarily a North American phenomena, however, in terms of mass popularity.
$8 completed on eBay for it isn't valuable VG++. You can get lots for under $20, get the Cros before he leaves upstairs to join Zally alive and well in Argentina.