collecting vinyl - advice thread
Somewhat inspired by the renaissance of the 'take photos of your vinyl' thread, and also inspired by a stack of free vinyl which I got yesterday, I'm thinking of investing in a turntable for a new flat I just signed for.
HERE'S THE RUB! I've just signed for a flat, without a job, in London. The financial implications of this need hardly be explained to you. Am I right in presuming that collecting vinyl is a second step towards super-ridiculous financial suicide? In any case - what I really want is pointers towards places (real or online) where I can get hyper-cheap, totally-awesome/interesting vinyl (a thread which hopefully will benefit others as well as myself). GO!
- Relevant artist taggings:
- the needy visions »[x]
- New Cassettes »[x]
- Robbers On High Street »[x]
- Vinyl Dreams 2 »[x]
- Chaz »[x]
- Secondhand Baby »[x]
- Crackle »[x]
- Turntablerocker »[x]
- Penny Hollow »[x]
- New Cool Collective »[x]
- Vinyl Ritchie »[x]
- Hipster Youth »[x]
- The Dust Collectors »[x]
- Poser »[x]
- The New Vinyls »[x]
- Totally Boring »[x]
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If you have to ask... etc.
You didn't say "vinyls", though, so I'm sure you'll figure it out.
PS: Pssst... charity shops.
*Chazzers
the only acceptable way of "collecting" vinyl is to go to them and just buy stuff from the 60s/70s with hilarious front covers
charity shops
box lots on ebay/gumtree
normal shops
car boot sales
mates/family who are having a clear out
record fairs
Yeah, all of the above.
Hit enter too soon!
One of the good things about buying more expensive vinyl (new stuff/collectibles) is that you can just sell it on again if you no longer want it or are in dire need of some money. CDs become pretty much worthless as soon as you've bought them.
you can find some good cheap stuff on discogs
read the user feedback and stuff though cos some people will send you stuff that is more knackered than the grading suggests.
or not send you anything at all...
that was an isolated incident though wasn't it
well, isolated individual
A lot of the 'big' charity shops (Oxfam / Cancer Research etc)...
will get someone in every week to price the vinyl they receive, so the chances of picking up something worth £50 for 50p are now fairly slim. Still fun to look though, and you might strike lucky with some of the more obscure shops.
Cats and vinyl!
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/oscar_the_cats_records/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=25&_trksid=p3686
I started from a second hand vinyl shop where they had records stacked from floor to ceiling
Spent hours and hours sifting out bargains: Pixies, Talking Heads, Suicide, Stereolab, Bowie, B-52s... all for one or two quid.
Then I hit up chazzers, nice for cheap records by popular musicians, and got myself a solid stack of 'classic' albums. They're also good for getting your hilarious novelty collection on the go.
New indie vinyl can be bought stupidly cheap from places like HMV website, and by then hopefully you'll have a job and some money to seek out some rarities and buy from specialists.
It's not really expensive to get a collection going.
If your looking to build a valueable collection
It's all about getting the really limited/ special release stuff by the "hip" bands.so it's important to really follow new releases have a good ear for what's going to be in demand the best examples from my collection recently are ashes grammer by a sunny day in Glasgow it's limited to 250 copies, I got 2 copies on vinyl for around $40 one has been played the others still sealed. It's currently up on discogs for $250 which is crazy. It's the same situation with the first julia Holter lp tragedy got two copies currently on discogs for anything between £50-£100.so get in early on the good limited. I've been buying since I was 17 so about four years I'd say my collection probably worth £3,500-£4,000.
a lot of those things just stay on the site forever though
i have a couple of stuff on the wantlist that are priced really high and they've been sitting on there unsold for years.
Yeh the sensible people just beg the label for a repress
Everytime I'm updated on my wantlist there's usually 4 or 5 copies of BOC-mhtrtc all going for £50-80 and that's the bloody repress it's all depends on the demand I suppose.
Plus
People that buy records with the explicit intention of selling them on for profit are douchebags.
Yeh those pricks ruin it for everyone
No doubt they've got record store day in their sights the bawbags.
much like ticket touting, the nerdos who pay their stupid prices are equally to blame
I agree with you to an extent
The dilema for me is say there's a record I would love to own for ex boc-mhtrtc, the only place I can purchase it on vinyl is on discogs or eBay the minimum price is £50 for a good copy. This is a record I have wanted for years but I've never had the spare cash to spend.If I had the money I'd bite the bullet a buy a copy surely you've been in a similar situation what did you do? I'd like to take this oppertunity, anybody with a spare copy willing to part with it for under what they can get on discogs/eBay??
True (about the nerdos)
but at least those people aren't profiting from it. I never spend more than £20 on a record (unless it's like a box set or something) but it'd be nice if I could get stuff like Lightning Bolt's earlier records without spending stupid money.
not really
when I was a teenager I probably would've paid £sillymoney for a Motown Junk CD single by the Manics, but (a) it was the late 1990s, so MP3s weren't as ubiquitous as they are now and (b) the tracks hadn't been reissued.
nowadays, when you can find a large number of OOP ltd run things simply by googling their names? no.
not that i'm suggesting i'm above this kind of consumerist behavior, it's more than for the £50 or whatever i could spend on one thing i really wanted i could get eight or ten CDs of other things i also wanted.
i found that it's a good idea to only buy records that you might actually like
don't buy stuff just cos it's there. i do that sometimes, it makes me sad after.
The larger Oxfam's
often seem to have had people in to price the vinyl up, but in smaller towns it tends to just get put out cheap, earlier this year I had mint (and they really did look like they had never been played) copies of Led Zeppelin 2, David Bowie Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane, Young Americans which were al priced up at £1.99. With charity shops it's about constantly popping in and having a look, for weeks on end you'll see nothing but Abba records but then once in a while you'll come across something worth buying.
I can never be bothered to trawl through charity shops rebuying albums I already have
I tend to buy on vinyl as any music fan would normally buy music- if I want an album, I'll buy it on vinyl, end of. I buy records to listen to, not wank over.
I'm not really that far over on the autistic spectrum to enjoy buying vinyl for the sake of it, e.g. some rare pressing of a 12" single really wouldn't interest me (unless it was Belle & Sebastian, who are the only band I really collect, so probably a bit autistic there). I have about 300-400 LPs since I started buying music exclusively on that format about four years ago.
Yeah, you sound far more irritating in your smug self-righteousness
than those 'austistic' people who collect records.
Belle and Sebastian fans define
the stereotypically twee/nerdy record collector that jiz their smalls over rare pressings of the pointlessly obscure.
there's not much B&S stuff which is that obscure though
original pressing of Tigermilk isn't hard to get a hold of, it's just expensive, and all the other vinyl regularly pops up on ebay.. I think the LP of The Life Pursuit was the most difficult to get as it's never been repressed. All the 12" eps were pretty easy to come across, too.
Lots of good advice in this thread.
Buy stuff you actually like.
Don't buy shit just to try to turn profit.
Ebay, record fairs etc are the way to go.
You may find the odd bargain in a charity shop.
If you want to 'collect' maybe start with something like collecting all the 7"s by your fave band (did this with Idlewild and part of the fun was trying to track down the early singles for a cheap price).
And above all if your town has a good independent record store then treasure and support it.
If you really want to COLLECT mostly-cheap vinylz you never listen to
Get into noise. :)
If you want to end up paying ££££ for a flexidisk of a guy taking a dump or whatever then get into collecting The Gerogerigege records. I only have a couple of the cheaper/easily avaliable noisecore-style 7"s so far but I'm definitely on the slippery slope :-/