I’ve thought about this for a number of years and I’m sure vinyl lovers might raise an eyebrow, but I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering selling most of my vinyl.
I don’t have a huge amount, couple of hundred albums/12”/45s maybe, from mainly 1978-1986, alternative/new wave/metal, but I just can’t see the point in time when I will get a turntable and we need to declutter. (Haven’t had a functioning turntable for 20 years or so).
Streaming, CDs and my current CD collection seem to be more than enough for my needs.
I would keep a box of my favourites and the ones that mean most to me, but I guess two questions to fellow Forumites:
Does anyone have any recommendations for best places to consider selling vinyl of that era?
Has anyone else had the same thoughts and carried through on it in recent times? Any regrets?
Thanks FR, I’ve fallen foul of the first rule of the forum, do a search before you post
Still interested to hear from people that may have gone down this road though.
It’s so fiddly and time consum8ng that I’ve ground to a halt.
Extremely difficult to get the photos and upload them and get the matrix numbers and try to be sure exactly which version you have, /cause if you say on the bay that it’s X it cannot be Y or they can send it back so it’s hard work and stressful.
Much easier on discorgs, no need to take phots, but prices are lower I think.
All I’m saying, old bean, is that it’s a fag getting all the details correct and perfect every time.
I think that many of the records I bought were oddities so are more awkward that her average disc to hunt down.
Specially all the white label 12 inch dance music from Black Market Records in Soho. I haven’t even looked at those yet.
i would sell original rare recordings on discogs, with a medium price, and all the other lps in vinyl shops, around 4 euros in general per album. maybe less for some.
When I sold mine on eBay I didn’t do half of that - thoughas a consequence probably only realised half the potential value. A lot of my collection didn’t have any significant value (AFAIK), and really I was just glad they went to appreciative new homes rather than the local incinerator.
Two things you omitted:
Buy specialist mailing packaging for maximum protection in the post.
Assess postage costs to ensure no loss, especially when a record goes cheaply: I knocked up a spreadsheet to cover different numbers in a package, and offered postage discounts for multiple purchases. Incidentally, I only ever post using tracked and signed-for services with adequate compensation - and posting from where I live meant relatively high cost, higher than eBay’s nominal expected amount, and to avoid negative comments I had to add a disclaimer in the listing explaining why my postage was higher than many other sellers.
Thanks guys, seems straightforward either by Discogs or the Bay, but very time consuming.
But I suppose like anything in life, spending time doing stuff will reap its rewards, just a question of whether we have the time available.
I guess my issue is I don’t know what I have that might be worth more than just a few pounds, only way round that is to painstakingly go through the Matrices on the back of the albums and look them up on Discogs to be able to work out which ones were worth the effort.
But also although the covers and condition is really good of all my vinyl (I always looked after them) I haven’t played any of them for more than 20 years and I have no idea of how they might play (scratches, jumps, etc). That makes it difficult to rate them if they were going to go on Discogs.
As was stated in the other thread that FR linked to, the people on Discogs are generally enthusiast collectors, I’d be concerned to rate things wrong and then get flamed.
Maybe I’ll just have to spend a weekend going through box by box and in the meantime check out some local places that might be interested. I live in Warwickshire so Leamington has a few vinyl outlets or Birmingham would be my options…sure I could get sorted that way also.
The value is likely to be in first issues or first pressings of records that are likely to be wanted by current vinyl collectors.
So you’re mainly looking for stuff you bought as soon as it came out.
Which in my case @JimDog is everything, buying music was new to me at the time so I just bought new releases.
Maybe I had better spend some time checking properly!
What is your next move if you have ground to a halt now? Will you carry on in the same manner or will you change your approach do you think?
Well, I’ve bought enough packing materials to sell all my records, so it would be nuts to stop now.
I need to decide whether to continue with the Bay or move it to Discogs.
I have opened an account on Discogs, and offered a couple of LPs for sale there.
But I don’t have a track record so I think I’d have to list lots there and build up my positive feedback and scores to get up momentum.
Or just continue with t’bay where I have 100% feedback and a stack of glowing reviews for books, vinyl and hifi kit.
I forgot to add, on eBay I only sold mine as auctions, not ‘buy it now’, so just had to decide on a starting price, high enough to not lose too much if there was no competition on ones likely to be worth a bit. Other than ones that stood out to me as special, I banded the starting price, starting at £1 for ones not nicely to go for much, then £5 or £20, or something like that. I dropped if that didn’t get any interest after a coup,e of tries (and in the end sold some for 50p). I did not resist immediately with a reduced price, as that would show people I was willing to drop the starting price. Instead I put up a batch of 10 or a dozen at a time, and ran several batches in between before resisting any.
Meanwhile my postage cost was calculated as cost of mailer+cost of actual postage, + 10% for eBay charge, + 3.whatever% for PayPal charge, rounded up to nearest 20p or 50p or something like that, so I could never actually lose money.
Has anyone here tried record fairs?
I’ve know a guy who had a huge collection to shift, so advertised a record fair in a local hall and charged a fiver for a small table / suitcase and a tenner for a large table and raised a little for a local charity. Got a bunch of folk looking to do the same out of the woodwork.
