Help please - Vinyl collection of recently deceased family member

Hi all, my uncle passed away on Friday and has left a significant vinyl collection which I just don’t know where to start with. He owned a record store for many years here in the UK so has a number of demonstration vinyl and presumably decent copies of LPs and 45s. The family and I are all still in a bit of shock from the passing but are unsure on where to start with the collection - can you guys give me any pointers as to what you’d suggest please?

Many thanks.

I couldn’t figure out which forum to put this message in seeing as it’s both music oriented and off topic. Gorts, please feel free to move to suitable forum.

 

I'd check on Discogs. That has real sale prices for millions of releases.

 

Sorry about your uncle. If you have an interest to go through all the stuff, then I would grab a laptop and go to discogs and start cataloguing stuff. There are most likely some good finds in there.

 

Firstly, condolences on your family's loss. It will still be very raw and will take time to process.
If his collection is stored safely and not in anybody's way, I'd certainly leave things as they are for a few weeks; don't do anything hasty so soon.
Record dealers and second-hand shops will certainly travel to value and buy large collections. If you and your family are happy to dispose of it en masse, that's the best option.
I assume you're a keen music fan to be a member here in the first place, so I suppose the family might be happy for you to select a few items of personal interest to you to keep, and from your description of your Uncle's collection chances are there'll be some nice stuff.
If you know a bit about the rarities he has, and can be bothered to sell things individually, you could pick out the valuable ones and sell on eBay, or maybe even list them in the marketplace forum here ( <-- It might be a comfort to know you're selling stuff on to like-minded fans who will enjoy your Uncle's old stuff)
Just general guidelines, really.
Good luck with sorting it out, I'm sure it will be quite upsetting in some ways.

 

How large is your Uncle's collection?
What genres, UK/US copies etc.

A bit too soon for your family to do this, but have a look through to see if there are any obvious rarities (Beatles 'Butcher' cover, US release for example) or EX to Mint...I'd filter those out for private sale.

There are always marketplaces (this forum for instance!) or EBay. Or collection buyers (dependent on condition/desire ability etc) like Eil.com.

Record Collector magazine could be helpful here. I only use Discogs to give me a ballpark figure - just because a seller asks $/€/£300 doesn't necessarily mean they'll sell it or that that sum is the real market value. A good resource to give some idea tho!

I hope your family's loss is, in a way, ameliorated by going through his collection, rather than being further upset by doing so - a memoir if you will, of your Uncle's life and love of collecting...

 

My condolences for your uncle, I’m sure he’s in a better place.

You might want to wait a bit, maybe a week or so until the wound isn’t so sensitive. I have been through several family members passing and the worst thing to do is immediately start rooting through the valuables.

When you are ready: Discogs is your best friend: it will give you all the info you need and it is super easy and helpful.

My wishes go out to you and your family in this time

 

Check Popsike also (and probably first because more vinyl is still probably sold on eBay than discogs). Popsike has eBay completed sale prices and listing descriptions of vinyl going back for years.

 

My condolences to you and yours.

I'm in the US, so I will leave all pointers and advice to the members abroad.

 

Many thanks all. Whilst I’m a big enough music fan to be on this forum for 14 years now(?) I’m a CD man and vinyl is not my area at all, hence the question.

My mother and her sisters are moving at pace as their way of dealing with the grief, by not dealing with it, so I’m trying to get them to slow down and have taken the vinyl collection as my job as to know what to do with it. As they were my uncle’s biggest hobby and career for a long while, I want to make sure we go about this with respect to him as opposed to just getting rid straight away (as others in my family want). You’ve given me a lot of food for thought so thank you.

 

Please be patient. Store this collection, go through it a bit at a time using Discogs, use sticky notes and ascribed a value to each lp as best you can, sell a bit at a time online. Be very careful if you go to a used record store...you won’t get much, and you could get taken.

 

Beware of selling on Ebay; there are a lot of people waiting to rip you off.

 

Give yourselves time to grieve and absorb before pursuing this.

 

Sorry to hear about your family member, as others have said, discogs is the best place to get a rough figure of what older LP’s are worth, look for the catalogue number on discogs and it will tell you want year the records are from, and what the going prices are in different conditions once you feel ready to look at them.

 

If you have any familiarity with popular music, it might help to begin price checking and visual quality evaluation by sorting artists with well-known mega-selling popularity and their most popular releases, and setting those aside until the end of the process. Go through the small-label releases and obscure artists first.

Artists at the top tier of popularity do often have some records with collector value, but it's typically dependent on minutiae and details (record company labels, label colors, stereo or mono, matrix pressing numbers molded into the run-out groove) that take a lot longer to check. The majority of million-plus selling releases go for very ordinary money.

Cover condition can be important, too- in particular, cut corners, holes, or other signs of remaindering typically lessen collector value. So set records with those features aside until the end of the process. Occasionally, cover artwork on LPs can differ through various editions of the same record- the rarities can sell for a lot more money.

Record covers that indicate audiophile label pressings- Mobile Fidelity, Mobile Fidelity UHQR, Nautilus, Sheffield, etc.- deserve extra attention. So do labels on the discs that indicate promotional pressings (these are often white label, rather than, say, the usual red, or olive.)

The toughest part is vinyl quality evaluation. The experts around here can tell you more than I can about visual inspection- a search should bring up plenty of results. Vinyl records in authentically mint or mint-minus condition are few and far between. Start by sorting out any still-sealed copies- but bear in mind that some records may have been re-wrapped and re-sealed in cellophane. LP records from the UK were often sold unsealed when new; on an otherwise clean-looking record, the first place to check for signs of play is near the spindle hole, which will most often show some light scuffing around it from putting it on or pulling it off of a turntable.

If you find any really rare and/or valuable records in very good condition or above, take some extra care to observe price points over time before you offer them for sale. And don't imagine that you'll draw the highest price with an auction, especially a penny auction. It doesn't work that way any more. You'll get bidders, all right, but you're at risk of being skinned.

 

Sorry to hear about your uncles passing. You should get some good advice here as to what you can do with his record collection. Condolences.

 

Sorry to hear about your loss. My advice? Get a turntable.

 

Guess it's your turn to run the record store.

 

My condolences to you and your family.

Selling a large collection can be time consuming, overwhelming and exhausting at the best of times; I can't imagine trying to do it under these circumstances.

There's really no two ways about it. The method that will garner you the most sales will require you to spend the most time selling and with a significant collection it will take a great deal of time to do it, especially if you aren't able to dedicate your time fully to the task.

Selling to a store will be a far quicker way of selling and although stores do tend to pay quite low, you can mitigate somewhat. You could check up on the various local shops. If you give them a rough idea of how many items, type of titles and condition (which shouldn't take you too long to do as it doesn't need to be exhaustive) it will get them interested, especially if you tell them he used to own a store. Call the ones with the best reputations, ask them to come over to view the collection and put in their best offer. I wouldn't spend time playing one against another, tell them to give you their best offer at the outset. Be clear with them and honest so they know what the deal is. Then, simply take the best offer.

An in between strategy could be to sell them yourselves but at record fairs. It will require you to price the records and that will take some time, but not having to list them online, which will save you a lot of time. Price them fairly so they will sell. If they are good titles at good prices in VG+ or better condition, you will be very busy. Do a few of them and you should be able to offload most of them. Whatever remains you can sell off at a store or via local classifieds. Be prepared for buyers to as for discounts but do not feel like you obliged to give one. If you already priced low and fair for quick sale, stick to your prices. They'll take the lps.

I've been doing record shows lately in order to sell of my collection. It does take time to prepare and it can be tiring standing around all day, but it's actually quite fun at times. IMO, it would be a nice way to show respect and honour your uncle; spending time with fellow music lovers as these lps go to new homes to be enjoyed. But I appreciate how difficult it may be.

I would suggest letting some time pass to allow you all to grieve and approach this when you are able to.

So perhaps as a first step, do some research on local stores with good reputations, local record fairs you could possibly sell at, etc. You could make some tentative steps at making some notes on the collection and possibly assigning values to each record.

You could make that process easier by weeding out less desirable titles and titles in worse than VG+ condition. In addition, when placing a value on the titles, make it a bit easier by making sections, £20-29, £30-39, etc. This will give you an idea on price and any very high value items can easily be separated, so for example, you could choose to sell the higher value items online and the rest, which may make up the bulk of the collection, elsewhere.

You will have to make some quick decisions when doing this. If you spend too much time on it you'll never finish. You'll only need to worry about detailed condition if you sell online (which I would not recommend unless you want to dedicate the time to it and you will need a lot of time). If you're in the ballpark, when you sell at a record fair (if you go that route), each buyer can verify condition themselves, same goes for any stores that come to buy the collection.

 

If you are in the interest of possibly getting into vinyl or making them more presentable might I suggest the Audio Technica LP-60 And or a Spin Clean. These will allow you to clean and play grade the important records

 

First of all, please accept my condolences.

As for the records, just take your time if there's no need to make money soon and if your uncle's heirs are financially stable.

Then, check the records and compare with discogs; tons of info there. Inspect the matrices and see what discogs says. And then you'll have to playgrade them to see if they're M, M-, EX, VG+, VG...think of this as the opportunity to enjoy some music on vinyl. It's possible that you're going to fall in love with the sound and keep some records, who knows?

 

Take your time and catalog the collection into Discogs with the exact pressing, writing conditions for sleeve, LP and general comments. Anything that comes up with a high dollar value verify with Popsike which will give you a great reference point. How you proceed from there is your choice, with time and money earned as the two main opposing forces. Personally, I have a record store and I like to set up one table at the annual local record show to help with the rare and unusual records.

 

Sad to hear - condolences. I am getting on in years and think about my own many 1000's LP collection and where it'll all go. My adult son tells me that he doesn't want it all and is "just going to get rid of it." I've even started to stick some notes in the outer sleeves of particularly valuable ones so they just don't dump them somewhere! For someone who hasn't spent years collecting and doesn't know where to start," figuring out what are first pressings, audiophile labels, valuable imports, etc could be overwhelming even with discogs. Sometimes tracking down a specific pressing even when you know to look at the matrix etchings can be difficult even for seasoned collectors. My advice to you is this: us collectors often travel in small circles of other collectors. I would see if your uncle had any close friends who shared his love of records and, after you've taken some time, ask them to come in and help you sort through it all. They can at least do an initial pass at sorting the potentially valuable from the common stuff, so you're not spending time researching what a copy of Arc of a Diver is worth. And then you can always, of course, ask for advice about specific pressings here. There's always a happy onslaught of opinions. Good luck!

 

I do that. Somebody would be very happy to get a six-eye , misprint label KOB at a yard sale for a buck, but I'd rather my daughter get something for it (for example).