The Rare Record Price Guide 2024

Product Information

This should be obvious, but the artist in question will be a big factor in determining the value of a record. While tens of thousands of artists have released records since the invention of the medium, not all of them interest the public in equal measure. In this post, we’ll walk you through the basic steps you can take to determine the value of a vinyl record. We’ll cover everything from tips for at-home appraisal to what to do when you can’t figure out a record’s value on your own. How To Appraise a Record at Home

What does all of this mean? It means that if you’re someone who has a box of “old records” and you want to know about those vinyl records’ value, you’ll likely discover that they’re common titles in average to poor condition and they’re likely not worth very much money. Whenever there’s a commodity that is worth money to people, there are unscrupulous people who try to take advantage of them by forging that commodity. Paintings have been forged, currency has been counterfeited, and unfortunately, so have many rare records. If an artist is not from the United States, collectors will often seek out records from the artist’s country of origin. While many American Beatles records are worth a lot of money, so are those from Great Britain, as the band released records there prior to releasing them in the U.S. Another avenue you might consider is selling your records at an auction house. Possibly a good combination of being able to achieve a high price without all the work. You might be right, but there are still fees here that will be charged for you selling the item. Probably more importantly are the fees that will be charged to the winning bidder. These can be as high as 20% so the winning bidder does need to factor this when bidding. Again it’s all an impact of the value of your record collection. Selling your records in Bulk whose price guide books have been the authority on collectibles values since 1985. TThe searchable database consists of

Contribute

It goes without saying that a counterfeit copy of a rare record will have limited value when compared with an original pressing. They can also be played on a turntable and are often used to evaluate the sound of a song or an album prior to putting it into formal production. While acetates can be played as one would play any regular record, they don’t wear particularly well and will become quite noisy after only a few plays. The market for the rarest records continues to be strong. The rare 1920s through 1960s keys from Paramount, Vocalion and others in Launched in 1987 and published bi-annually - the Rare Record Price Guide 2024 is the SEVENTEENTH edition of the World's most comprehensive guide to prices of UK releases from 1950 to the current day. One factor that’s of vital importance in determining a vinyl record’s value is condition, which we’ll discuss at length later. Because the condition of a record is held to be important by collectors, the ideal example of a record to own, in the eyes of many collectors, would be one that has never been played at all. Because of this, collectors will often pay a huge premium for sealed, unopened examples of records they are seeking.

In the case of such records, a mint copy might sell for 50 times as much money as a worn-out copy of the same record. Those people out there who have severely damaged records by way of one or two very deep scratches, rendering the quality ‘poor’, might still consider selling them because some of us only want the covers and in some cases the inner sleeves where these cannot be replaced by generic inner sleeves!

Plenty of factors can come into play when you’re appraising the value of vinyl records, including age, rarity, condition, and more. It’s often tough to know where an LP in your collection ranks in these categories. That’s where we come in. In the late 1970s, picture discs were often pressed as promotional items and became quite popular among collectors. Most of these were pressed in quantities of only a few hundred copies.

Whether you’re a longtime vinyl enthusiast or new to collecting LPs, it can be difficult to determine how much a record is worth. You may be staring at Bleach from Nirvana, or a record from Frank Wilson or Elvis Presley, without any idea what it actually might be worth. As a rule, collectors tend to favor original pressings, so for a given title, the most desirable label variation would be whichever one was in use on the day the record was originally released for sale to the public. There are exceptions to this, however. The red Capitol label mentioned above was commonly used in the early 1970s for a number of titles, but was never intended to be used for records by the Beatles. A few copies of the band’s Revolver and Yesterday and Today albums were accidentally issued with that label, and despite not being “original” issues, they do sell for quite a lot of money on the collector’s market. As we always say, however, there is no fixed price for a second-hand record, no matter how rare it is. There are still bargains to be found out there, while in other situations like a feverishly competitive online auction particularly sought-after items can fetch prices way above their ‘book' value. The price of a rare record is purely determined by what people are prepared to pay for it. The list of qualities that can affect a vinyl record’s value is constantly changing, and the list shown below should not be considered to be definitive. As this post on vinyl records value is going to be fairly lengthy, we’ll divide it into sections. Vinyl Records Value CategoriesSome collectors go after specific pressings or issues of an album that were only produced during a specific time period, then discontinued by the record company. While you might be able to find a more recent pressing of the same record, the older, discontinued pressing is likely to be worth more in the eyes of a collector. The rarity of an album can differ based on whether you’re looking at 45s or 78s as well. The exception to this would be records from companies that do not ordinarily release records, such as the Franklin Mint. Over the years, the Franklin Mint has released a number of recordings as limited edition sets, usually spanning many volumes. Most of these recordings were also pressed on colored vinyl and the sets were marketed in mass media to consumers who were not record collectors. These recordings have little value unless they are offered in complete sets, some of which came with as many as 100 records.

There’s a robust online community of record collectors and music fans who are always on the lookout for rare vinyl, so we recommend listing your records on the internet if you’re having trouble selling them locally. Records pressed in foreign countries are often of interest to record collectors. While most collectors are interested in records from the country where they live, a lot of them are interested in owning anything unusual by the artists that interest them. Record changers, which were phonographs that were capable of playing up to a dozen records in sequence, were popular in the 1960s and 1970s and were particularly prone to adding scratches and abrasions to a record’s playing surface. Many covers were poorly stored, leading to ring wear or splits in the covers. Furthermore, owners often wrote their names or other information on the record’s cover or label. Condition matters a lot.Prices vary widely. We strive to reflect actual selling prices rather than Internet "asking" prices, which are often inflated. Because the value of a particular record is tied to so many factors, it’s difficult to give a general answer as to its value without knowing all of the particulars about that particular pressing.