@Discophrenia said this on another thread: “Sorry, but fuck vinyl. Just ridiculous amounts of money that ultimately, 9 out 10 punters don’t care about. It’s so cheap now to get top quality digital files now. Sorry for the rant, but the cost of vinyl now is completely fucked up. I’ve totally lost my love of buying records. Give me an aiff or flac every time now. I do have around 1000 7” singles that I’ll never sell, but everything else is being given away free.”
and I have been following Vinyl Pimp’s responses to people giving him all sorts of upheaval for trying to sell his business that includes 22k records for GBP85k and, as someone who has sold his entire collected in the last 12 months - $18k for around 5000 records it ended up being - it really does beg what is the point and value of a record collection?
I lasted about a year with no records and then I dipped my toes back in and in again and again. I like the catharsis of looking for records online and in a store (mostly in a store so I can chat to the guys behind the counter and leave with something I would never have found) but it seems like unless every record is super rare - or the perception that they are super rare - then the value plummets to what Amoeba give you - 30c/record no matter what it is.
Also, reading how little you make like that article from Auntie Flo also shines a light on the small independent artists that most of us like to support. How much longer will it be until we are all forced to fight over what is already pressed as everyone will be digital. Does it matter?
I think about this a lot and have been considering selling off a chunk of my collection, basically the dance side of it. I still love looking for records, I find it therapeutic and fun. It’s a hobby. I’ve long been a collector and not a DJ.
I doubt I buy more than 2 new records a month. The cost has become prohibitive. I think buying records as a nest egg is pretty crazy unless you have a lot of money and are prepared to buy rare stuff now in the hope it’ll keep going up. Risky. I do it sometimes if it’s something I really want and know it won’t likely ever go down in value. I go to a lot of fairs, car boots and shops and see a lot of mid price stock sitting there and never moving. I think the market for “rare” second hand records is grossly overpriced in general.
The value of a record collection should really be what it means to you on an emotional level I think, never financial.
Been toying with the idea of cashing in my collection the past couple of days.
Really wanted to pick up the new Hiroshi Yoshimura from LITA and got the preorder email through - an eye watering £52 for a 2LP. Sorry but no thanks, can’t continue to support an industry where this is seen as reasonable practice.
Sounds so tough for labels to press records these days - yet so many unnecessary represses of “classics” are continually churned out for sale in the likes of Sainsburys. Depressing.
Certainly going to shrink my collection right down and quite like the idea of buying every again in CD format for about an eighth of the price.
One thing I will say is that the records I have bought will either be records I will play for years or super cheap ones that when they’ve lost their mojo will probably just be stuck on discogs or sold to someone who likes the music.
Of the 4 gigs I have had this year, 2 were with records and 2 were digital. Having thumb drives in your pocket - well bag - with headphones is so much easier and places just aren’t set up for vinyl anymore no matter how much they have shelled out on a rotary DJ mixer.
I think @jolyon is right, the value is truly self-evident as opposed to us kidding ourselves by pretending it will be some great value in the future. I collected records for 20 years plus, lugged them across 4 continents, treated them with impeccable care and only got $18k for it. And every dealer/store I spoke to thinks I got away with highway robbery.
Yeah I kind of share the sentiment. I’m so annoyed I got into this at the very tail end of when it was still somewhat affordable. Getting good records here in Brazil is almost impossible, and people have gone absolutely mental with values - worldwide. It’s become a major annoyance to me, especially looking at social media and seeing how everyone seems to have every record I want but can’t afford.
I’m almost not playing anymore, so my feeling is to do something similar to what @jolyon has said and sell off the dance part, and own only proper albums that I can sit and listen to throughout.
it is getting dumb expensive. i went through my wantlist the other day, and minimum prices on stuff i want seems to have doubled. the center cannot hold.
i’ve lived long enough that i’ve seen the boom/bust of vinyl pricing cycle a couple of times. my dad taught me to buy the record and tape it (rather than buy the tape) because tapes break and they’re easy to lose. then everyone started chucking wax in lieu of CDs, and the used shops were as full as could be. then i started DJing and vinyl was the only game in town. then everyone went digital and chucked their wax again, and equilibrium was restored. then the kids came along and were more than happy to pay $45 for a 180-gram bullshit orange-and-swirl pressing of billy joel’s “the bridge”. jesus wept.
in a way, i welcome the over-inflation of used prices, because it prices people out of the market. (apologies to those in here who are those priced out and don’t want to be) the majors (and overzealous reissue happy indies) testicles will retract into their abdomens, new releases will dry up, and the used shops will fill up with 2022 pressings of modern chud.
i’ve always bought records and i likely always will, maybe not at the same rate as before but there will always be something old worth spending my money on, and there will always be something new that gives me the same thrill as it always did.
I mean it’s a bit of a ranty click bait thread title.
Buying records should be like participating in any hobby: at a level that’s appropriate and fun, surely?
Some of the new prices have got a bit out of hand, but maybe they’re not as mass market as they were?
The second hand market can also be a bit skewed and Discogs is partly to blame (or people’s inability to understand it)- if a £5 track has sold for £50, that does not make it automatically ‘worth’ 50 sheets minimum!
A recent period of skintness stopped me going into record shops, browsing online and getting (too much) FOMO about what I was discovering here etc.
Was also a healthy reminder to dig the records i already owned…
Just to reinforce the point I made above here is a picture I took a couple of weeks back of a copy of The Best of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on sale in WH Smith for £45!
This is everything that is fucked with vinyl in 2025
Stopped buying vinyl years ago but still sometimes hang around the stores here, browsing, listening to tunes or seeing familiar faces. It is a tiny community but those stores still have their place, and there are fewer and fewer public places where heads can get together on a Saturday
I fell out with vinyl about 2 years ago and haven’t bought a single record in that time. The costs just made it impossible to grow my collection how I wanted to.
I was thinking that I’d be probably giving up DJing too, other than for fun in the house. I moved to USB a few months ago, and the ability to pick up tracks at a more affordable price has been an absolute revelation.
I doubt I’ll ever go back to regularly buying vinyl, but I might pick up occasional albums, more because I want to own them rather than I’d ever play them out.
This is my permanent self questioning - I have 3k records already - mostly albums - why the fuck do I need any more? A large number of those records I don’t know intimately in the same way I knew my records back to front when I had a few hundred. What’s it all for …
I bought a record for my son the other day. White label jungle thing. Loved it. He has started playing vinyl more and I now see my record collection as something he could have in the future. Once his taste matures beyond the strictly banging, that is. Gives me a renewed sense of purpose with it. I definitely buy a lot less vinyl now but I don’t think I’ll stop completely. I feel at peace with my current level of purchasing.
Nice isn’t it. My daughter now has about 20 of my records in her room along with her own. My copy of Everything she wants that I bought at the weekend lasted about 20 minutes downstairs.
Every once in a while she says have you got
……? and I can take a smug satisfaction if I can say yes.
My son couldn’t give a toss, never buys anything and just needs some headphones to go alongside the family Apple Music subscription. My daughter has the collecting bug.
I have long ago learnt not to push anything on her but to let her find her own way.
When I bought my copy of Heaven and Earth by kamasi Washington about 4 years ago it was £35 and that was the average price. That’s 4 bits of vinyl with a 5th hidden in a secret compartment. So that’s also some pretty custom packaging.
It’s gone up now to £55, but could never understand how young turks could produce and sell it at that price when everything else was 15-20 per disc
