What's Worth More on the Open Market - Your Records or Your Audio Gear

That is easy, (For myself personaly) my record collection. For two reasons.
First, the quality of condition and pressings of near 9000 lp,s. I worked part time in a record store and obtained most that way with many imports . I bought many more later on for pennies on the dollar in the late eighties. Kept the valued and clean copies only from whole collections and gifted the rest to sally ann type stores. Also my father kept and maintained some very good and sought after blues and jazz records.
The second reason, what would all the analog front end be worth in my system with nothing to play on them?
Its more about personal perspective than opinions in absolutes. We all have different bias when it comes to these types of questions. No need to shade others. I have some blue notes and quite a few others i could easily sell for way more than my whole system..... based on current values......But....i paid little for them when i got them so I'll enjoy them. If they end up worth how little i paid....so be it as i enjoyed them for little and kept them in shape for someone else to do the same or as they wish...
I can see how some would think little of some value for record collections between the condition and the content within and the pressing #... that and how current , popular and valuable the actual individual audio pieces are worth.

This is an interesting subject.

I can see some specific genres fetching more than a Bruce Springsteen album or a Dave Brubeck’s Time out. I’m curious if the buyer was a reseller paying $10 an album, with visions of doubling his money(at minimum) with a 2000 record collection?

What at the heck did that guy have? Were they ALL period stampers in pristine condition? I’m sure there are some among us who do have that kind of collection, but they are unicorns.

Lewm’s friend must be one of them? Was the buyers name Tom Port?

For what it’s worth DSOTM 1973 release 80 copies above $500 on Discogs
and another 4K for sale

Discogs provides a range valuation for collections, IF you enter it. There are a lot of mint products listed at skim cream wishing well prices, but the average is fair for peddling them one by one

LP’s are not worthless. I’m in the process of selling all of my albums and I have averaged around $10 an album, I have sold 100 so far. All of my sales have been thru Facebook marketplace and local online outlets

LP’s are not worthless. I’m in the process of selling all of my albums and I have averaged around $10 an album, I have sold 100 so far. All of my sales have been thru Facebook marketplace and local online outlets

eBay sales don’t get as much as people think. And eBay is a fair representation of the value of records in general. Also, a lot of records you see for hundreds of dollars on eBay are there because they have not (rpt not) sold.

I’ve got about 4k albums and my collection would hit about $10 per, as an average. As a minimum, even. ie, about 50 records in the mix that street price out at ~$200-700.

I know someone who has about +10k albums and they would fetch about $20-30 per, minimum. If not notably higher. All blues-jazz originals, for the most part. I mean, I could go to his house, pull a record randomly, blindfolded, and be looking at a street price of $25-50, for just about any one of them. He’s got many a $500 record, just due to rarity alone.

the fact that these records are held is part of their valuation in current times. If the market becomes flooded with the desirable albums, then their values plummet dramatically. Which is what happens when the senior collectors start to really get the boot from the planet.

They say that there is a huge high priced real estate glut coming in the US, as the baby boomers all sell off, and move to retirement homes. Approximately 21 million high value homes, they say. (just some light reading, never really did more than skim the article)

Shocked at that ratio which equates to $10 an album. Must have been a huge amount of spectacular rare mint numbers.

Even though I know I have some tasty pressings I still just think in terms of $1 per album if they were sold as a wholesale lot ( if I am lucky!). Anything else might net more but possibly a disproportionate amount of time and effort to sell.

Gear is usually easier to value at any given time although selling is becoming harder and harder as the market shrinks and disposable income becomes, well less disposable.

Years, actually decades, ago J Gordon Holt (if you don't know who he was then never mind) commented if one's record collection was worth more than their components then they were a music lover; if the components were worth more then they were an audiophile.

Lew, that your friend could sell 2,000 LPs for $20K is astounding.  Could that have been a single buyer?

I've been getting rid of records for years.  I've only got 600-700 left.  They are probably close to worthless.
I still find myself buying cds in spite of subscribing to two streaming services.  For the past year I've had the thought that each cd I buy is another object my kids will have to dispose of when I die. 

My kids are not into owning music. 

imho, with some obvious exceptions (original blue note, parlophone beatles, etc.), the value of record collections is very small.  Also, the time and effort required to sell them is enormous: inspecting, grading, listing, 
packing, shipping, correspondence, returns, and so on.  As others have noted, anything other than mint condition stuff is usually virtually worthless, and the market continues to shrink, as audiophiledom dies off.

If you live much longer, your heirs will be streaming everything and will have no idea why anyone would possess thousands of pounds of discs that take up so much space.  What will happen is that your heirs will sell them en masse, at pennies on the dollar, to a record seller, to get rid of them. They will not educate themselves and go to the effort to sell them individually.  I won't even do that myself; life is too short.

Some categories are essentially unsellable, e.g., opera.  After repeatedly trying to sell my collection (about 1000 mint discs) and receiving no interest at all, I eventually gave them away for almost nothing.  In retrospect, I should have just donated them to the local opera society.

As much as most old gear depreciates (again, with exceptions, e.g. Mac,AR) it still tends to have some residual value if it is in nearly pristine shape.   I recently took several pieces to Goodwill (MIT tube terminator cables, a fine but 30-year-old DB Systems preamp). how much effort is it worth to get a few hundred bucks for something?  Not much. You'd be  lucky to be working for $10 an hour - if you find a buyer.

I wouldn't invest much in reissues, except for things you just have to have. Most don't sound very good and will not ever sell for anything near their original price.

A friend just sold his LP collection, around 2000 LPs, for $20,000. I was flabbergasted that the selling price was so high.  However, his system easily cost more than $100K.  Assuming he can re-sell his gear for ~$60K (60% of retail), the system is nevertheless worth more than the LPs.  But if he had owned e.g. 10,000 LPs, and if he'd been able to sell at a similar per LP price, we would have a different answer. The question is really silly, because it is so dependent upon each individual's LPs and/or gear.

Don't tell your family to hold their breath for a big cash windfall.
Our LP collections are not worth what we think they should be.Never will be. Same goes for the audio gear. A very small(and shrinking) group of buyers will always be around, but like ANYTHING, its a niche market.

You"re at the mercy of the buyer, who is in the drivers seat.

Those people finding out they have an AMAZING piece of something on the Antiques Roadshow, experience the same realization.
An unsealed, Brit Parlophone Beatles, Blue Note,RCA etc...are not going to put your kids through college, or make a house down payment. It may help a little bit, but that's about it.

Best to instill the sentimental value with your family, and enjoy them.

@jab interesting comment. Obviously no appreciation of the music industry and its roots. Why are so many artists still releasing on vinyl then? You shouldn’t even be on this forum IMO.

I think it depends on a lot of factors. Album condition, what pressing, how popular is the music etc. I disagree with the fact that Lps will be worth nothing. I subconsciously sold off most of my cd collection but still held on to my vinyl. They are certainly making a resurgence even with the younger crowd. In terms of selling, I would look at Discogs where you can actually search out your records and see what the going rate is. I have kids that I turned on to vinyl and they appreciate the whole process and sound quality.

I think I could estimate pretty accurately what prices I can get for my gear...not a clue what I might actually get for my LP's...and for records to have any real value they need to be totally mint...with all the LP reissues not sure what vintage originals are worth now

Records will be worth less in the future good luck selling them for the amount you think there worth.Stereo gear will also be worth less in the future most times.

It's impossible to say. 

Each cycle of value has a peak and that cycle and the given peak requires there to be a world that is stable enough, affluent enough... to be interested in it.

The question is if we are at 'peak lp' or not.

It would be foolish to assume that the world will always be interested in LPs at high prices. Assessing carefully, weighing the factors, looking at the history of other cycles...would be a better way to look at things.