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

Steely Dan was basically in the dollar bins with Barbra and Fogelberg. Now they are $20!

 

I saw a green label Vol.4 at VG+ for the album, with a VG cover, recently in a shop for $60. To me it seemed like a lot.

 

Actually that seems reasonable compared to what I see. $100 plus for unremarkable pressings.

 

If by radio, you mean "stations on an FM dial with commercials," then correct. No one's listening to that.
But if you expand radio to include satellite radio--where you have a choice of hundreds of stations fine-tuned to your particular interest--and also throw in Spotify and Apple playlists that do the same thing.... Then WAY more people are listening to the radio than ever before.

And it's not hard to see someone listening to an 80s station on satellite radio and getting exposed to New Order or Echo & The Bunnymen or the Smiths or any number of bands that didn't get much play on American radio in the actual decade.... which is driving the prices of those records even higher. Same with the hair-metal stations and so on.

 

And I say good luck finding playable Steely Dan records for 20 bucks. More like $40-50 or more. It really is getting ridiculous.

 

I’m seriously considering how to sell a collection.

 

Because Sabbath is still extremely cool and Grand Funk Railroad is.... Not??

I mean, why does a Herb Alpert album from 1967 go for $1.50 and the Velvet Underground debut from the same year go for 200 times as much? It's a mystery!

 

September 2019 I got an original Aja for $11.99 in NM- condition I’d say. Not that long ago at all. Pandemic did weird things to some titles.

 

This replies in this thread are really pushing the point home of how vinyl is priced in different markets. In my region you can get regular Sabbath stuff for $20-30CAD. Steely Dan is still $5-10 CAD, maybe $15CAD in NM shape.

 

All this goes on while the clatter of CD cases landing on driveways in garage sales and shelves in thrift stores for fifty cents to two dollars rolls on......

 

Can you provide a link to a retailer selling Steely Dan for $5?

 

Online retailer selling $5 records? Why would they bother? I see records like Gaucho all the time in my local store. Over in the bargain bins for $5-8CAD. I sold a NM Aja a couple weeks ago for $10CAD on Craigslist. It sat for weeks and weeks. There is a NM Aja right now on Marketplace for $15CAD and the listing is months old

 

Wasn’t comparing Sabbath records to Grand Funk records but to other similarly cool bands: Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc.

 

Some really inflated ones I’ve noticed people paying in stores or at shows for…

Anita Baker - Rapture $40-$50. Like the cited Tracy Chapman S/T, a once common $7 buck title.

Soundtrack- Saturday Night Fever $75 at a store in Orlando. Twenty something male was the purchaser.

Soundtrack - Grease $40 at the Orlando Record Show the next morning. The young gal didn’t bat an eyelash at the cost.

All the Billy Joel titles have suddenly risen into the $20 or more level area. I need to flip all my $3 Stranger & Glass Houses dupes!

My favorite though is a copy of Donny Hathaway’s In Performance LP for $100 my local shop had for sale. When I asked why it was so high, the clerk snottily said ‘because it’s rare.” I couldn’t help myself and replied “while his earlier live album is, this one wouldn’t be worth a hundred if it fell out the window with Donny.” Poor taste I know but I guess they got the last laugh on me because someone bought it.

 

The Moody Blues are still uncool. You can get their records easily for under $5.

 

I knew that Tracy Chapman record was special years ago. It's amazingly well produced and stands the test of time.

 

Still WAY more people listening to FM than satellite.

 

Some record store owners think anything Beatles related is high dollar. I see absolutely beaten up copies of Beatles albums on sale for $20 plus. Albums aren’t worth $1, much less $20.

 

Do you mean new wave cassettes (e.g. the recent spike for Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love"), or are new age cassettes also hot now?

 

This is strange. People seem to hoard even totally unlistenable albums, as long it is original. Makes one wonder if these so called collectors listen to their records at all.

 

At least they are keeping the unlistenable one's out of the market.

 

Rumours has risen from ~10€ album to an easy 20€ during 2 last years.
Sparks' 70s albums like Propaganda, Kimono my House, Indiscreet used to be 6-8€, now easily 15€. Not to mention Angst in my Pants which I bought for 14€ or so a year ago.

 

Every other YouTube video about vinyl mentions this one as being an amazing sounding album and hifi demo disc. Obviously all the kids want it so they can bask in the analog warmth of vinyl on their £70 Crosleys.

 

Digital-->Analog
The old compact sounds great as well.
If you're looking at it from an art/design aspect some may be paying those prices for that alone.
Anita Baker-Rapture, my local had it for dirt cheap. I love the cover on that one also so I picked it up, but mainly listen to the old CD.

 

I meant new age. For example, cassettes on the Valley of the Sun label, which specialized in "healing" music, often with subliminal messages and stuff, is super collectible on Discogs. A lot of those sound bath / align your chakra-type things with flutes and bells go for stupid money, and many are being reissued. Lots of Japanese stuff, too. There was a big Enya piece on Pitchfork not long ago. Of course, as with anything, there are still releases no one will touch, but as we've seen from this thread, that could change any time. Put John Tesh or Zamfir on some "chillout" playlist, or feature one of their tunes in a popular Netflix show, and I bet you'd see a spike in his sales on the secondhand market.