Most expensive record/CD in your collection?

had an absolute dream find yesterday morning. found a first press johanna martzy / schubert sonatas on columbia. mine has a slightly battered cover but this is what it's gone for on ebay in the last couple of months..

https://image.ibb.co/fbVgho/Capture.jpg

I am guessing that sounds really really good?

it's pretty sweet! nice clean vinyl too

i paid 50p for it btw. it was right at the front of a stack of about 800 records at a carboot sale and then i spent the next half hour digging through the rest like a fucking madman, hoping that none of the local dealers showed up before i got through them all. there were a few other nice bits but that one - aiiieeeee....

how do you know what to look out for in terms of classical records Nick? I got a copy of this the other day which was pleasing but hardly in the same league!

it's pretty straightforward with classical once you've figured out the basics tbh. it's a lot like jazz but without all the quirky independent labels to worry about (obv not many indies could finance orchestral recordings) - it's primarily about specific collectible labels and then within that it's about specific instruments, but instead of blue note/verve/impulse/prestige, you have decca/hmv/emi/columbia, and instead of sax players you have violinists and to some extent cellists. after that you're looking primarily for early stereo pressings from the sixties - the labels for the early pressings are fairly distinctive, so once you know those you're golden. monos aren't worth shit if a stereo version was also available, but the martzy is a fifties record from before the stereo era and she's one of a handful of earlier violinists who are kind of fetishised by collectors (see also ida haendel, nathan milstein, ruggiero ricci, ginette neveu). do an ebay search of sold classical records and then sort by value and you'll see what i mean. good thing about classical record hunting is that there isn't as much competition and a lot of the most valuable things were made in the uk but highly in demand on the other side of the planet. this is all purely from a valuation POV though, and mostly i just buy classical records that i think i'll enjoy listening to or that have nice artwork (there are some really lovely looking old records out there!).

thanks Nick, that's really helpful advice, I will bear it in mind when I am next doing a charity shop run! And yes I agree about buying things because you're actually interested in the music being an important principle- I bought the Stravinsky record above mainly because it's a wonderful piece of music.

no problem!

Oh another thing that can have an effect on the value is appearing on something called the TAS list - some audiophile guy made a list of supposedly the best sounding records across all genres, but there’s a lot of classical on there and it seems to be a real marker of quality for some collectors