boobietheclown

Exactly the info I was looking for - Thanks!

fender69

check out www.needledoctor.com

They have some budget turntables.

Gigantopithecus

i have a portable numark PT-01. you can find it for $80-100. its a pretty tough little turntable, its not as good as the technique that was posted, but its pretty good.

The Infidel

It was just a joke, dude.

SoSpacey

I have 2 Technics 1200 M5Gs that are my DJ turntables. While they are rock solid TTs, they are more of a DJ turntable than an audiophile turntable. You end up paying for features you don't need by going this route. They are a direct drive TT (no belts) so a DJ can play with the platter and have the platter react and recover quickly.

I also have an Onkyo TT from the 70s that is a belt driven, "home use" TT.

I am 33 and my introduction to music was on 45s. I still have ~100 from when I was a kid (Swing Out Sister - Breakout, Eddie Murphy - Party All the Time, etc).

My mom has 100s of records that I got to pick and choose what I wanted from. Have some Sinatra, Original Beatles pressings, etc. I started "collecting" again about 8 years ago. I ONLY buy records of music I like and only care about condition and playability.

My records get played.

RagingBull80

I don't really see the point in buying new albums out on vinyl. By that I mean, it seems kind of stupid to spend money on an LP that was orginally released on CD. Yeah, NEW vinyl is kind of cool, depending on the album but I prefer to buy original pressings and such. To me, if they repress the album, why not just buy the CD? I prefer having the CD for the simple fact of the quality issue and the ease of using. All that being said I love my vinyl collection. I try to find the closest pressing to the original. If the album was released during the time of vinyl then I would love to have it on vinyl but for some reason if it was released on CD first I have a hard time warming up to it. Maybe I'm just weird.

Now, all of that being said, I am 20 and I completely missed the age of vinyl.

So to answer your question...Yes, I collect vinyl.

thismeansyou

My reasons to buy new vinyl:
1) Cover art, feel, all the aesthetic stuff of having a record
2) The sound
3) The fact that CDs will probably go the way of the dodo as well as vinyl, so why not buy the format I like better? You can't burn a record, whereas given the right net connection I can download and burn a CD in 10 minutes. I tend to listen to CDs in the car and with my ADD personality, I'm switching them again and again. This results in a lot of CDs thrown around the car, being scratched and all. So I buy the record as my permanent piece that I keep immaculately, and download the CD and just keep burning it when it's too scratched to play.
4) DJ purposes

brokenhanger

I still buy my fair share of vinyl - my mom got me started back when I was 4 or 5 buying me a 45 every now and then when she was out at Woolworth's. Really strange stuff too [for a mom to be buying her 4 or 5 year old that is] - Duran Duran 'Notorious', Prince 'Raspberry Beret', Wham! 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go', etcetera. One of the first Christmas presents I remember recieving must have been when I was 4 - a [at the time] very nice turntable with double tape deck, and copies of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Oingo Boingo's "Nothing to Fear". [The first two from my parents, the latter from my Aunt...still not entirely sure why she chose that particular album, but I'm thankful for it to this day.]

Now I mainly buy new singles [mostly from the UK] and bargain bin used LPs on vinyl, but there are a couple of artists that I buy all of their albums on LP too. The big one is Super Furry Animals as [a] I'm a huge fan of their artwork and it's just lovely on the larger packaging, and [b] there's usually a bonus incentive on the LPs, at least since they went to Epic: the bonus 7" for "Rings Around the World", the etching on "Phantom Power", the fantastic pop up in the gatefold for "Songbook". I really hope Rough Trade does an LP for the next one.

I do, however, think the 2x7" formatting that they've been pushing lately in the UK is stupid. That said, if I like a band enough I'll get suckered into it - just ordered the new Charlotte Hatherley on CD and 2 separate 7"s as a matter of fact, all because 1 of the 7"s has an exclusive mix. I'm a total sucker for vinyl exclusive tracks or releases - the Duels 7" EPs from last year were some of my favorite releases.

RagingBull80

I would actually like to see some pictures of some people's collections. I'd like to see pictures of some of your most treasured records. If you have the means and the time, I'd appreciate seeing some cool images. I think I might take some pictures of some of mine as well and post them up here for you guys to see.

SoSpacey

bump to see if anyone has any online sources for vinyl they can recommend.

i know the dance music sites...just looking for some pop/rock type sites.

bhk

acousticsounds.com and musicdirect.com are some nice places to get records. They also sell turntables. needledoctor.com sells turntables and cartridges.

cfloyd3

Wow, I went to my local used record store and they got a huge new stock in and priced them all around $1. I got Last Exit double vinyl by Junior Boys for $2 still sealed up. Talk about a surprise seeing that there mixed in with U2 and Bruce Springsteen junk. I got a bunch of other stuff but the Junior Boys had to be the most surprising.

cranberries fan

Flim scores on vinyl is all that I look for (just the one that are not made on Cd's).And there are alot of them!

Dan

Bump! This seemed like the most appropriate thread to bump, as opposed to starting a new one on the topic.

I'm curious to know if anyone here has any records that they've discovered are pretty valuable.

I have three copies of Matthew Good's Avalanche on vinyl. I think only 3000 were pressed. I bought one on release day when I worked at a record/CD/DVD store. A couple months later, we still had two copies in stock, and my boss wrote them off and gave them to me for free. They're still sealed, but one has some damage to the packaging (creases, small cuts, etc.). The most recent auction I found for this item on eBay ended at $257.99 (link). Otherwise, nobody seems to have this up for sale anymore.

I'll probably sell the two extra copies eventually... but it's good to know I lucked out on that one.

So... who else has a record (or two) that's pretty valuable to crazy fans?

statcat

most valuable ones I have are probably the easybeats Australian records from the 60s one of which is signed by the whole band, Stevie Wright, Harry Vanda, George Young (Angus of ac/dc's older brother), Dick Diamonde, and Snowy Fleet. Also have a mono copy of vigil which is pretty rare I think, just looked and one sold for $70 on ebay. I'd never part with those though

Supermallet

I own an original issue copy of Meet The Residents by The Residents, only 1,000 pressed. The band re-released the album in 1977 in a shorter mix that is the one that's been used on all CD editions of the album. I don't know exactly how valuable it is, but it's worth a few hundred at least. However, I'm not planning on selling it.

Lone Wolf

I picked up a copy of The Flaming Lips "Transmissions From the Satellite Heart" on craigslist for $2 a few years back. It normally sells for around $70-80 on ebay.

GoVegan

I've only got a few hundred records, and most of the ones that are valuable at all are newer releases. I've got a few Spiritualized and Spacemen 3 albums that are a little pricey, but as far as I know the most valuable is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Howl, which seems to go for $250 or so.

Chrisedge

I have 3 sealed copies of Synchronicity by the Police that are either gold/silver/bronze or just black and white instead of the very common Yellow/Blue/Red. I have heard about copies going for anywhere from $100-$400 depending on quality.

Like this...

Mikael79

Does anyone have a suggestion on a site that does a good job of shipping vinyl that arrive in good condition? I've had bad luck with a few big name sites (B&N and Amazon), but I'm hoping someone has some other options.

Lone Wolf

I've never ordered from them but I've heard lots of good things about soundstagedirect.com.

This page shows pictures of there packing process which looks quite impressive. Better than any albums I've ever received in the mail.

hdtv00

Place I found for this kind of talk is http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/index.php they all went nuts over this site for buying records when they had amazing deal on old albums for killer prices. They ship very very well packaged and even will hand inspect each record if you wish. Anyway the place I bought some recently even and they raved about was http://www.themusic.com/

I spent weeks reading threads on their forum. It was a great find. I think I actually found the place from here somewhere. Convinced me enough to actually buy 3 records after 20yrs since I bought the last. Was interesting.

Luther Heggs

The very first 1988 CD reissue on ESD used the original mix, but all the subsequent reissues - Bomba, Euro Ralph, ESD again - used the (IMO inferior) 1977 mix. That first CD issue is valuable, but the LP is much more so.

Me, I've abdicated my position as obsessive collector and have been selling all my vinyl off over the last few years. If you bought a fuck-ton of shitty alt-rock on vinyl in the '80s and '90s, you can make a 1099-K full of money these days.

Supermallet

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize the original mix had ever been available on CD.

orangecrush

This is very true. I started and sold off my collection of vinyl in college. Not that they suck, but I bought 3 Smashing Pumpkins records (Siamese Dream, Pieces Iscariot and MCIS) for a total of about $50 at a couple of local record shops and sold them on ebay less than 2 years later for over $200. They were pretty sweet records though. The B-sides album was translucent neon green and Dream was a red/pinkish/white mixture.