Second hand record prices rising well over inflation?

I think a lot of it is sellers know what they have more than they did a decade ago. It’s easier to find the market price for something, which means finding steals is bound to be harder.

 

babaluma, I would like to tell you that it will soon be over.
but I have doubts.

 

Time to sit your partner down and tell him/her that you’ve invested all your savings in records and brace yourself for the outpouring of gratitude

 

They can't price them at a level that won't sell.

That said, I do think that the prices for clean late-'60s- early '90s records by the known artists are only going up (I mean, probably other years too, but these are the years that most people in here seem most interested in), because there is a limited supply of the vintage pressings (a supply that shrinks every year) and the music has still retained an audience (for some artists, the audience seems to keep growing). And while seller overhead never determines the market value of an item, I think records stores are putting higher prices on the good stuff because it's getting harder for them to come by and their profit margins aren't what they once were. It's not like there aren't still yard sales/estate sales to be pillaged, but there's less of them. It's gotten so much easier for people to sell records themselves, that the supply of saleable titles that the record stores can buy for X and sell for 3-5X is getting smaller. I would surmise that there will be fewer 2nd-hand brick and mortar record stores around (because they were out-competed for the good stuff that brings a price) before the prices of the titles by the usual bands starts to significantly drop. In other words, I don't necessarily think that falling demand will reduce the number of record stores, but falling supply.

New titles aren't going to do the trick, as far as replacing the older ones, IMO.

We have to remember that there were millions upon millions of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd albums pressed, to get to whatever the global supply of VG++ to Mint copies is today. Take the top 20 from any given year from 2007-present in Rolling Stone/Pitchfork/NME, etc., and how many of those copies were pressed? Those were runs in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. 20 years from now, even if people are still listening to the music, there will be just a small fraction of the number of albums in circulation. from the desirable titles of 2007 to the present.

Not enough to take the place of the 70s/80s titles on the shelves today.

 

And we're still wondering why vinyl is so expensive these days? People here are complaining about the high priced vinyl offered by record stores, and in the same breath are contemplating on overpricing their own vinyl and flipping them. I'm not personally going after you, but considering the dilemma most vinyl enthusiast are currently facing, maybe you guys should sell your stuff for reasonable prices too.

 

Anybody who held onto their stuff from back in the day, who might be getting on in years and isn't umbilically attached to their vinyl.... not a bad time to cut bait and realize some huge gains and learn to love streaming.

And if not, all the more for your heirs.

 

Have kept my records for 50 years, when I am too old to play them I might consider streaming...

 

That's how most shops operate. They will offer pennies on the dollar because that is how they make money on used vinyl.

Something really special that the owner thinks they can instantly sell on eBay for $$$ *might* get an offer of 30-50% of FMV if the owner is feeling generous that day.

Anything mixed in with a bigger collection is back to pennies on the dollar, no matter how much a couple individual LPs are worth.

There are several local shops in my area and virtually none will pay more than $1-3 for a used LP worth up to $30 FMV. Trade in credit might get you a couple bucks more per LP, but not much more.

 

I did back in the 80's...SHOULD HAVE WAITED! now is the time when people will pay!

 

There's the price people are asking, and there's the eye-popping max price somebody once paid. That's the ebay flippers freak-out zone.

But then there's the reality of selling — which translates to how cheap you can get what you want if you're careful and patient and not mad for mint perfection. There are still record shows and stores and thrifts out there where you can find beautiful scores for normal money.

Discogs is a bit of a manic casino right now — having recently catalogued my best stuff there, I'm certainly guilty of looking at the ridiculous imaginary pile of wealth I'm sitting on if I sold off my record collection for those absurd jacked-up max prices. But there are still plenty of sane deals to be made for buyers on Discogs.

My current plan is to listen to as much of my vinyl as I can as long as I can, and then scatter the records among nieces and nephews and after that to the four winds. Much of my collection will certainly blow away, but I also have a small treasure chest of gems that I'm pretty sure people will want to spin pretty much forever, as long as they're still spinning. Or so I'd like to think.

 

Please don't think that London prices are typical of the whole UK

 

Ok, I had to consult the inflation calculator for this positing so here goes. Back in the late 1960's and early 1970s, (when I did most of my record buying) records (LPs) retailed anywhere between $2.99 to $3.99 depending on whatever store you bought them from. That would equate today's dollars to between $22.28 to around $29.73. Those mom-and-pop retailers who also bought and sold used records would charge between $1.00 to $2.00 for the records that were in better condition and popular at the time. That would equate to around $7.45 to $14.90 respectively. Double albums could go for more in good condition. So that would give you an idea of what they may have retailed for. Record prices would eventually go up in price from the 1970's through the mid 1980s just prior to the introduction of CDs in the mid 1980s.

I have a friend who had owned a retail record shop for around 20 years now. He told me that it is very difficult now to get quality used product because nobody is selling. They are all buying, and he even has other record shop owners pulling from his inventory if they think they can make a profit off of it. He now is relying on new pressings for his main inventory and hoping that he can get other record buyers to sell their collections. When he does, he has to pay a premium because these record hobbyists know what they are worth and not selling if he can't meet their price.

 

When CD's first came out, people were dumping their vinyl collections at the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Because I was still into vinyl then, I took advantage of that. However, I only cherry picked out the stuff I really liked so that I could upgrade to some better quality copies. I could have bought tons more for just about nothing. Some thrift stores were not taking anymore records because they didn't have the room to store them all. Things have really changed since those days.

 

How do you get too old to play records? That will be job # 1 for my caregiver.

 

arthritis

 

I used to frequent a record shop in Los Angeles that carried British exports, so I used to spend a dollar more for the British pressings vs the US counterpart. I felt that the quality control and packaging was way better. I still have many of those British pressings to this day in my collection. They are getting harder to find now, but I will still buy them if the opportunity presents itself.

 

Indeed there are.

 

Like I said. When you can't do it any more you get the caregiver to do it. It's in the job description.

 

Spot on!
In 2017, I finally took all my LPs out of their U-Haul packing boxes and into an Ikea album shelf. All 1400 of 'em.
At the time, I wasn't looking into purchasing more vinyl. I just wanted to play my LPs again, as I never replaced most of them with LSSTs.
3 years ago, I decided I would start buying vinyl again- old and new. It was easy to snap up the Moody Blues' "core 7" LPs, among others.
Now that things have opened again- SoCal record stores, and in thrift stores primarily- prices are stupid. Regardless of artist. It seems that the thinking is "it's vinyl, so let's charge more!". And half the time, these LPs are in lousy condition.

CD prices are way low now- regardless of artist.

I just told a friend of mine yesterday to start snapping up LSSTs!

 

I buy collections when I can. I don't have a record shop but a rented spot in my local antique shop. Even with my much smaller scale operation the overhead makes for a very thin (if any) profit margin. Someone with a collection they want to sell has two choices, sell to someone like me or sell them themselves. Nothing is stopping anyone from selling on eBay or Discogs. But that requires a lot of time and effort. Selling to someone means that they assume all the time and effort for you. They take the records off your hands and replace it with cash.

Let's say you have two boxes totaling 100 records. The first thing I would do is ask if anyone else has gone through and bought any of the records or if you've pulled some of the records out of the collection. If that is the case I'm probably not interested. If not I'll look through the records checking titles and condition. In all likelihood at least half will either be in poor condition or have so little demand that they aren't worth anything. So now we are down to 50 (at most) records. Of those, 5 might be $10-$15 records at a retail record shop. 20 might be $5 records and 25 are $2 records. So roughly we are looking at $200 if you can sell all 50. If I were to offer more than $100 for that collection I'd probably lose money. You might say only $1 a record but it is really $4 a record because I really only want 25 of those records. I'm just taking the rest off your hands as a favor.

After I get home with those 100 records I'll have to go over them more closely. Some will be hauled to the charity thrift or county dump. The rest I'll carefully clean. I'll spend about 10 minutes per record. So that is about 10 hours of my time. I'll replace inner sleeves and put them in outer sleeves. That's about 45 cents per record. Then I'll set them out to sell or trade them with another collector. Meanwhile I've got to pay space rent each month regardless of how many records I sell.

If you have a record collection that is packed with high dollar collectibles then I would suggest you go to the classifieds here and list them yourself.

 

first or second cover? If it was the first issue cover in clean condition, 75 was cheap.

 

that’s how I make a living. Asking me to sell things below market value would be like asking you to work for 20% less than your current salary. Sellers don’t set the prices; supply and demand in the market does.

 

Quite! yes, it goes back and forth...Vinyl/CD...etc.

 

Yes, that’s exactly the equation: if you want top dollar (or anything like it) for your records, you need to put in the elbow grease. For all except the top-tier collectables and high-demand big names (Floyd, Zep, Fleetwood Mac, late-period Beatles etc) it’s rarely worth it. And when you get down to it, too, most people’s collections aren’t in the condition they think they are, and they underestimate how much a top price relies on top condition. (If someone tells me “all my records are in mint condition,” that’s as good as a guarantee that many of them are VG- at best.) If you sell in bulk — and especially if you’re not going to clean them, make sure there’s a good inner sleeve, glue your busted unipaks back together, etc — you have to expect bulk prices.

I’m in the same boat as you, lazydawg: I have a booth in a vintage market. I pull in $1-2k per month gross after rent and commission, and I spend $3-4k per month chasing down quality records to sell. (Obviously not sustainable!) If I had a bottomless well of vintage Rumours, Abbey Road, Floyd and Zep I could probably make $2-3k per month and just use the rest of my inventory as window dressing. But of course it’s the oddball stuff that makes this an interesting hobby.

What keeps me going (and broke) is learning about music I’d never known about before, filling little holes in my personal collection, and talking with folks about music and records.

The used market has become super competitive. There are a lot of stores in town chasing the same limited well of desirable vintage records in VG+ or better condition (and wondering how to get rid of the thousands more VG commons without literally giving them away). I’ll pay $20 for a $30 record… with margins like that you can’t make many mistakes. Sure, there’s lots of $10 records I paid $1-2 for, but they’re cheaper because there’s less demand and more supply, so they’re tough to move — and it takes a lot of them to add up.

@lazydawg58 , one of the best investments I ever made was a $300 ultrasonic cleaner that does 8 records at a time. Changed my life!

 

I’ll carry that torch well, please call me when you’re ready to sell!
I’m young, and obsessed, and got that money in my pocket.
It’s my generation driving prices up, but I like the competition.