Vinyl Buyers: The Premium Price Vinyl v. Cheap Vinyl Ratio


The market share of vinyl in new recordings is driven to a large degree by willingness of vinyl buyers to pay premium prices. Nevertheless, there is a huge pool of cheap vinyl out there; records that sold millions so there's hundreds of thousands of copies on the market and on down. To listeners who buy a lot of vinyl these days, what is the ratio of your budget between premium price/collector price albums vs. low price albums?

Personally, when I buy vinyl it's usually things that never came out on CD, which is often quite reasonably priced, but the sticking point is the price of pandemic era shipping, which is staggering. There was a seller of English folk music on Discogs who offered free shipping on orders over the equivalent of US $250, so I started tossing things and tossing things into the shopping cart (or basket, as they call it in Blighty) to get up to that figure. I finally wound up spending $350. I would say about $150 of that was collector-price items.
heretobuy

Showing 4 responses by vinylshadow

millercarbon is right about better records. Their prices WILL blow you away. Crazy. But I’ve never bought a record, nor will I, from there so I can’t comment on value.

What I’ve learned through the years is to research the best mastering of a particular record. Hoffman forums will help with that. Sometimes a remastered LP sounds a ton better than an original. Sometimes vice versa.

If you like jazz, buy Kevin Gray remastered Tone Poets and Blue Note Classic records
for $25-30 each. Buy from Amazon as they have a great return policy on any defective records.

I buy a ton of remastered records, some inexpensive some not. But you need to be selective about it.

Analogue Productions sells a lot of remastered LP’s for reasonable to slightly higher prices. Some they remaster and press with their company QRP, others are from good companies that do their own remastering and have outside pressing plants.

Discogs has sellers selling every kind of music. You just have to be certain of proper grading.

If you are looking for $5 used LP’s, sign up for Steve Hoffmans Forum and scan the classified ads. You’ll have a lot to choose from. You can usually count on proper grading and fair prices.

Jeff Beck Wired is one of my favorite albums. If you can, buy the Analogue Productions 45 rpm sets. Unbelievable. And their Blow By Blow 45 set is even mo' better. 
@millercarbon 

I'd love to hear your Hot Stampers! Would there be a 2 drink minimum cover charge to contribute to the $600 Mingus? :)

I tell ya though, I am curious about them. But paying $300 on up for a standard issue will take a special record to me that I know the sonics of very well to even consider. 
Jeez. I'll have to take another look and see if any LP's they have I'd be interested in trying.

I'm not a Rye drinker(may never have even had Rye except in a Manhattan decades ago) but I'm going to buy a bottle of Finished and see what the hub bub is.