Nick Danger

I bought about 200 records in the 1970s. I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to them, but I haven't listened to them for decades. It's time for them to go. What's the best way to sell them? I'm tempted to take them to the record store and accept their offer.

Is there a price guide to used records? I imagine that Led Zeppelin 3 with the turning wheel is worth more than the later editions. I know that some of my Velvet Underground records used to be collectible. How do I find that out today?

Neitzl

Try this site to see what current values are
https://www.discogs.com/

cultshock

I'll second the recommendation of Discogs, it's the best place to gauge the value of your albums (and help differentiate the various pressings) and best place to sell them .

Kurt D

I'll take the VU album with the banana sticker intact, for the cost of shipping. Sticky Fingers with zipper too.

Nick Danger

How about a Beatles Butcher album, second state?

I had a chance to buy the Banana album, but a previous owner had torn the sticker at the stem and then stuck it back.

I can't object. I have In Through The Out Door, and I played with the colored dyes on the sleeve. I'm sure that made the value go down.

andicus

I only became aware of the dyes in the last few years, so mine remained intact. As did the paper bag, save one tiny tear.

Personally, I'd keep them and start listening, again, but to each their own.

I agree with others that Discogs is a reasonable place to check pricing. At least then, if you do go to your local record store, you've got an idea what to expect. Lower, of course, but at least you'll have a relative value.

FWIW, if you're willing to ship, consider selling them on the Steve Hoffman forums. As it sounds like you'd have a lot of original pressings, there's a good market for them, there. The caveat is that you need to be a member for at least 30 days, and have a minimum of 50 posts in the forum.

rw2516

Check the run off of LZ III. Early pressings have "so mete it be" etched in.
There were 6-7 different covers for In Through Out Door. Each is from the point of view of each person in bar. The paper wrapping should have a letter stamped on it A-F to identify which cover is inside the wrapping. Eventually they went to just one cover.
Lot of frills are only on early pressings. Die cuts, stencils, even gatefolds eliminated eventually. At some point they started printing the zipper on Sticky Fingers.
Colored vinyl only on early pressings of some albums. J. Geils - Bloodshot (red). Grand Funk - We're An American Band (gold)

I had about 900 albums. 6 Peaches crates. Decided to sell in 1990. Took them to rare record store. Had to park around the corner, a block away. Had to lug them from car to store. Gut gave me $650 for stack about 5 inches high of rare ones. Had to lug them back to car. Get home, lug them back in house.
Parents had a garage sale. Lugged them into car. Out of car to parents driveway. $1 a piece. Sat around awhile. Gal came by and was checking them out. She picked out Bryan Adams-Cuts Like A Knife. Looked at it for scuffs and scratches. Bought it. I get tired of hanging around and go home. No sooner do I get home and walk in the door, the phone rings. It's mom saying there's people at the house who want to buy them all. I zip back over there. It's this same gal and her husband. I let them have them all for $600. Around 70 cents a piece.

Only thing I regret is that now I wish I had some of them to frame the covers. In Court of Crimson King, It's Only Rock n Roll, Diamond Dogs, Alladin Sane, Eat A Peach, Ice Cream Kid, some others.

Nick Danger

The records are in a storage unit, but I remember that one of my Led Zep albums has that.

I just looked at Discogs. I need to find out if my copy of Soft Machine 1 with the spinner is censored.

Too bad you sold your record collection right as CDs were getting big. It was probably the bottom of the market.

Paff

RE: Going to a record store.

Take the absolute minimum you'd accept for the records. Now divide that number by 10. That's the offer you'll get at the record store.

Josh-da-man

I have copies of "Led Zeppelin III" with the spinning wheel and "Physical Graffiti" with the die-cut windows that I got from Columbia House in the late 1980s, so those editions were available during vinyl's initial lifespan.

I have the regular cover of In "Through The Out Door," and I don't know if it has the paint-it-yourself sleeve. I never knew about that until a few years ago and don't want to try it now. I don't remember if it came with the paper wrapper; if it did I would have thrown it away. Also don't remember where I got it... new at a record store, or Columbia House.

John Galt

Best way is to sell on ebay/discogs/etc, but that will take the most work on your end. FWIW, records are very easy to ship. You can purchase cardboard mailers in bulk pretty cheap, then just package up a record, slap a label on, and take it to the PO.

Record store is the easiest way, but you'll get the least, and they might not even take some of the records.

Online classifieds (craigslist, facebook marketplace) are usually a good middle ground if you find the right person. It's just a matter of how much time and effort you want to put into it.


If you were to post a list here, I'd probably be interested in a lot of 70s/80s rock.

Hokeyboy

Use Discogs to get a general idea of how much an individual might pay for vinyl of reasonable quality, but their values are still overpriced. A record store or vinyl trade show vendor won't pay anywhere near that amount.

Paff

Not quite sure what you mean, in that, if people are paying it, doesn't that indicate the value of it?

I mean, I know I'll see something like someone selling a copy of Yodelin' Andy Yodels the Hits and they're asking $200. Doesn't mean that's the value of it, of course, especially if it's not selling. But Discogs also allows you to see the history of what a particular pressing goes for, and if you see 5 copies have sold in the last year for around that range, then I'd say the price, and value, are accurate.

Geofferson

I'm pretty sure Discogs is the most widely used source nowadays for market price. I know a few stores around me primarily use the Discogs Median price as their benchmark when they price used stuff. Seems to work well and results in some deals for rare stuff that doesn't pop up on the marketplace very often.

If you have the patience, it's easy enough to sell there. Packing materials and labeling are both pretty easy. Reaches the widest consumer base as well. However, It will be time consuming to catalogue since it's all pressing specific (as it should be).

Nick Danger

Do the buyers on Discogs expect the seller to know how well the record plays? I don't want to spend hundreds of hours doing a quality check on the sound.

I looked at their listing for Soft Machine 1. I recall that my copy is in better condition than any of the ones for sale there. I might even be sitting on a pretty valuable collection.

It's too bad I didn't buy a copy of Sticky Fingers with a zipper. They were around.

Paff

They do, but only if you try to claim "NM" (near mint) or better. If you claim "VG" or "VG+" and there's no visible scratches, you should be ok.

Geofferson

Yes, visual grading is usually sufficient. So long as you have a decent grasp of NM, Ex, VG+, VG. Material defects can usually be spotted visually or even felt -- I don't play test the albums I've sold and this has worked out fine. Depending how they've been stored, may want to check for warp as well. The time consuming part on Discogs is likely identifying the specific pressing. Year, record plant, etc. Need to validate matrix #'s and labels - there are often a number of label variations which can be maddening.

Paff

Yeah, that's a good point. I try to keep my Discogs collection accurate in terms of pressing, but even when I apply several filters to a particular release (like, "vinyl" and "US pressing") it can still only narrow it down to like 15-20 releases. Especially highly popular classic rock records.

I know recently I bought the first record by the Ramones that was supposed to be an 80s release, and there's just no way it was for the near-perfect shape it was in. But I can't really fault the seller because there were so many versions pressed, and the one in question did seem to match a listing for a version from the 80s. I dunno, maybe I just lucked out.

Josh-da-man

My old vinyl is very well cared for. I have LPs -- both the jackets and sleeves -- that look pristine, or at least the way they looked when I bought them new in the mid-to-late 80s. A few flaws here and there that were on them when I bought them, like lyric sleeves that were split by the record, or little flaws on the jackets that were there before I even took the shrinkwrap off of them. But no rings worn on the jackets or bends or creases on the jackets that weren't there when I bought them. They still have the sheen on the jackets, too.

Like you could take the jacket of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" LP I got from Columbia House in 1986/1987 and the brick red one I got from Walmart last year, and be hard pressed to tell them apart.

cultshock

Columbia House version of Puppets, nice! That's supposed to be the best sounding vinyl pressing of the album, gotta get me one of those.

Paff

What you describe is quite different from the typical Ramones fan (who actually WAS a Ramones fan in the 80s)

cultshock

I still have a lot of my vinyl from the 80's and most of them are in great condition. My KISS albums from the 70's are a little more worse for the wear (hey, I was only 10 or 11 years old when I got them) but they are still playable and I even still have most of the posters and inserts, although most have pinholes and tears in the corners.

Jason

I mostly bought cassettes as a teenager, but for some reason I bought all the Doors albums on vinyl, including Absolutely Live and was even able to track down the two without Morrison. I also picked up random stuff on vinyl during college, including several Kiss releases on Casablanca including Love Gun with the paper gun. Also have a die cut Physical Graffiti. All are well used so I doubt there's much collectors value. Can't decide if I want to sell as I keep thinking about getting into old Vinyl, simply because it would be fun to start making record store trips again. Haven't bought a CD in a couple years now.

Geofferson

I started my vinyl collection in the 90s going to estate and garage sales when lots of people were transitioning to digital CDs and offloadiong their vinyl records for cheap. I've been accumulating off and on since then but going to used record stores is one of the overlooked reasons why I love the hobby. I'm fortunate to live near 4 stores that are within 5 miles of me (2 of them are blocks away) and I frequently strike up entertaining conversations with the owners or other like-minded customers.

Paff

Yeah, I'm probably even luckier to have about 15 shops within a 40 mile radius, several of which recognize me on sight and give me a "welcome back" kind of hello as I come in. Just off the top of my head, Record City, Vinyl Junkies Record Shack, Normal Records, M-Theory Music, Reanimated Records, Standards, and Folk Arts Rare Records all know me. And yes, you can definitely strike up good conversations with staff and customers. A few recent examples happened at Vinyl Junkies. First time was when I found a copy of Tad Nugent's Free-For-All in the $3/$5 "Diggers Den" section of the store and I mentioned to the owner that it was technically the first record by the recently deceased Meat Loaf. They were unaware of this. Then a week or so ago I was casually chatting with someone in the same section (Diggers Den) about how so many good records by known artists were in there. He said something about The Eurythmics, which prompted me to direct him to a $3 copy of a record by The Tourists, the first band for Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart which he was totally unaware of. I have to wonder what he thought of it when he brought it home. Then the owner was pleasantly surprised to see that I'd found a copy of The Mighty Lemon Drops' Happy Head in that same bargain section and said she was going to have to check for herself when I told her she had World Without End there (I think there's an unwritten rule that if a record has been in the stacks for a certain amount of time then the staff is allowed to buy it for themselves).

So yeah, lot of good times come in the record shops, just know ahead of time it can also be a major time and money suck.