How Much Did Albums Cost In The Early 70's?

I used to pay $2.99 at Budget Records and Tapes in Houston.

 

Wilkie, you are the man! This kind of stuff really interests me!

So is it safe to say that cut-outs, overstock, etc basically don't really exist anymore? I rarely see any these days - at least any that are from the 00's. Since The Rolling Stones catalog will be reissued by UMD pretty soon, shouldn't that mean the Virgin/EMI pressings should become overstock?

Or do the Stones have a clause that requires any left-overs be destroyed? I say this because, it's not like you saw a plethora of CBS issued Stones stuff get cutout once they signed with Virgin....

 

$4.99 in the mid 70s. I remember being pissed when they went to $5.99.

 

Someone else asked a similar question in another thread. Here's my answer with some examples of the return policy changes that started about 10 years ago. There are other reasons, but this is one of the key reasons.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php?p=2424243&postcount=36

 

$3.99 to $4.99 as I recall.

Many "new releases" would be as low as $1.99 when first released; that's what I paid for "Billion Dollar Babies" and also "Led Zeppelin IV" when they came out.

Deletes were 0.99 (I remember seeing many of Love's albums in the delete bins as well as many Door's albums!)

 

Wow! That was my favorite thing to do, take the bus from Linden, NJ, to Elizabeth and raid Vogel's and Alwicks! I remember the prices being as you said, about $3.50 . . and they had the .99-$1.99 racks toward the back. And yes, I had many fights with one of the brothers;he used to play your record on a turntable that had a tone arm like a lathe and say "skip? what skip? doesn't skip on MY stereo" Man, what a memory jog I'm having . . .

 

I've got several early seventies albums James Taylor, Joni, etc that were purchased at the time of release..$3.19 stickers on the shrinkwrap purchased at a now defunct membership dept store called Fedco, which generally had cheaper prices than other record stores. And the Wherehouse must have had a sale..All my Creedence purchased in the same period is 2.98. I remember buying them and feeling like I'd made out like a bandit. I think the average price was in the high $3 range back then, maybe $4.

 

I made $1.60 an hour sacking groceries after school in 1970 so took me a couple of hours work to buy an album. Nothing like going to the record stores on a Saturday.

 

This translates to roughly $19-22 in 2017 dollars, for everyone always complaining about how expensive records are these days.

 

If you're still following your thread, may I say you are correct....maybe a little over 4 bucks but I remember buying both Ram and Sticky Fingers for 3.98 each at Alexander's Dept. Store. But there were rip-offs to be sure even back then...I remember seeing Abbey Road the first weekend of the week it was released for a whopping $5.99...and this was 1969!!

 

I bought Night At The Opera the week of release for $6.99 at Corvettes. I think I may have erroneously stated another time that it was Sam Goody. It just came back to me.

 

If you were member of the Columbia Record Club you
were entitled to a bunch of lps for 1 or 2 dollars. After that
they got ya at 5.98 a record for the 1 or 2 that you had
to purchase over the next year. Most likely I have a few of
those around somewhere in a box. Oooh, the 8-track was the
cutting edge of mobile technology... loved them.

 

I bought Revolver in 1966 for 1.98

I paid 2.99 for Revolver in 1973.

Records cost a 1/10th of what they charge today.

Can you say Fat Cat money grubbers?

I can!

 

I bought my records in K-mart from '73-'76. The list price was $4.19.

 

New release DJ copies were $1.98 at Cutler’s in New Haven.

 

Good grief, Charlie Brown!! How much I would love that price tag today lol.

 

$3.99 was the high point of cheap records for me.

 

The earliest I remember is in 1975 seeing the price of albums go up to $6.99.
My parents thought that was a lot.
I did too.

 

I remember getting Neil Young - After the Goldrush & Led Zeppelin III for my birthday & they were around $4.99 each. 45's in the early 70's were .99 where I lived.

 

My recollection is about the same as everyone's else's. Albums were $3-$5. I grew up in a small town in Northeastern Pa. and there was a small Mom n Pop drugstore that would carry some vinyl. I had to go the big city ( Wilkes- Barre) because they had a mall with a really cool record store. Eventually my hometown got our own little mall and they had a record store so now I had choices. Those were the days.

 

I believe my local shop here in Brooklyn was charging $3.50/$3.99 an LP - with a two for $6 deal on Wednesdays, late 1960's through early 1970's. I'm pretty sure I bought Best of Cream and Led Zep 1 on the same day.

 

Gimbels New York apparently were $2.79 for mono, $3.59 for stereo back in the summer of '64 (if you go by Something's New release date) or summer of '65 (if you take 'welcome' to mean the US tour).

 

Think that’s why I have all the mono US Beatles lps. Thanks mom!