Be it as it may, personally, I would never trust to any “original autograph” unless I was there at the time and saw it with my own eyes, but that is just me .
When I first came across him I enjoyed his videos. Seeing him in a Phoenix store while sat in a rainy UK was quite cool! However, he then explained how he would buy any of the first Velvet Underground albums he saw and hoard them. As you say, price then rises due to scarcity. Naked capitalism at its worse!!
There's a lot of people doing stuff like this and not all of them are full or even part time sellers. Collectors just holding onto multiple copies of records.
I saw that too and to me it was utterly despicable! One guy with 50-100 copies of the same record. That’s not about enjoying music, or advancing the hobbies. I know many other ethical dealers who actually try to get records into other passionate collectors hands for fair prices.
Not sure I agree with this. Every record shop I’ve been to lately has a tiny section maybe 1 percent or less of the store where records are $5 or less. Maybe at a goodwill store but everywhere else-not so much.
Indeed. Went to my local shop recently. He had an original Manic Street Preachers album that I really wanted. Little out of my price range. He has put it aside for me despite knowing he could sell it for even more immediately. His words " I would much rather sell to you than a collector who will simply put up the price and move it on". Actually good business because I go there often due to his attitude.
Collecting 1920s jazz records with a minor emphasis on rarity is one of the worst things I could have done for my retirement planning. Prices have been pretty consistent accounting for inflation since the 1930s. Prices on some clean desirable stuff have gone up a bit, but nowhere close to the S&P 500. The same could be said for even cream-of-the-crop rare blues 78s. The only hope for the big shellac collectors is that the super-wealthy art collecting crowd starts to go for records...fat chance. I don't regret collecting records; I just wish I had more time to transfer and sell my collection and keep less of my net worth tied up in them. As a parent of a young child, it's an uphill battle.
Once in a while I see an old guy brag that he bought a rare 78 for something along the lines of $75 in 1983 and it's worth $300 or something now. I'm like, "Yeah, but if you put that money in the S&P 500, it would be worth $6,000 now!" Even ignoring the historical run of the last few decades and just getting a mediocre yearly return, the record would still be a weak investment. And that's one of the better-performing records! Some of the blue-chip blues 78s are probably a bit of a more compelling case and maybe at least worth owning in a diverse portfolio, but I still think it's pretty risky and anything more established is a smarter bet. It's true they aren't making more of them, but the appeal is pretty limited to a few hundred collectors worldwide at most.
There are a lot--Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, Ishman Bracey, Mississippi John Hurt, many other blues discs. There are thousands of 78s worth $100 or more, and hundreds worth $1,000 or more. I mostly gravitate to the jazz stuff with artists like Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Clarence Williams, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Adrian Rollini, Red Nichols, dozens of territory bands, etc. Most jazz discs are in the $30-200 range clean but can go much higher if rare and bidding heats up. Like I said, the cream-of-the-crop blues stuff is appreciating much faster than the jazz stuff, but 78s can be very collectible if you do your homework and learn the ropes. Most of the best stuff in clean conditon only changes hands via places like eBay and specialty mail auctions and is very hard to find in the 'wild'.
Instead of buying a record and expecting it to go up in value, what about a record signed by a Beatle? Or all four Beatles? In 20 years time, it will be worth a lot more money than now. Of course, you would have to shell out a lot of $ to get that record, but people invest more in the stock market and have not nearly as much fun. Wouldn't it be cool to have that record and know it's going to be more valuable no matter what? The Beatles are timeless and fashion proof.
I wouldn't add a cent to the value of a record I might sell because it was "autographed". The only value I see in an autographed record is a personal, emotional one not a monetary one. If the artist signed it to me personally that is important but only to me. I recently picked up a copy of Bruce Hornsby and the Range's second album. It was signed with a personal note to the original owner. There was a $50 price sticker on it. I paid $2.50 for it and after cleaning it and putting it in new inner and outer sleeves I set it out at the vintage show for $8. If it doesn't sell in 6 months, I'll put a red dot on it to sell for $4.
Except that the value might be at it's peak right now and in twenty years it's actually worth half that. Have you ever watched the reruns of Antique Roadshow? They show the value of items at the time of the original broadcast and the current value. At least half the time the value has decreased and often it remains about the same. I seldom see the price doubled.
At the risk of derailing the thread and sending it off in a NSFW direction: Call me naive, but how does one "invest" in sex?
