Post your Discogs user profile for discussion/bragging/desperate attempt to bond with like minds

Well Gigi Masin is another tip top favorite for me as well. Sometimes the hype is super justified!

OK getting a little worried about the market; worried that record shopping is going to be ridiculous moving forward.

I was looking at my collection on the discogs app which has the nice little feature of showing not only min/med/max prices of each album, but also shows you the price of the latest sale. Kind of neat so I kept clicking each one out of curiosity. Was a bit shocked to see that for like ~85%(?) of them the latest sale price matched (or was extremely close to) the literal max sale value. Example after example... it was incredible. Takeaway is that the averages prices for everything in every genre across the board are going to go way up. Brick and mortar stores that price based on discogs as gospel are going to just be silly... everything 2nd hand is going to be like $50 and up, but not because they're delusional but because they're savvy. The only stores that will be worth going to are the ones that are savvy but actually mindful about the important difference between online marketplace and local clientele.

We'll see.

Yay for my collection value though?

Yeah, the second hand vinyl market is crazy right now. The crazy and immediate price gouging when an artist dies or breaks up really bothers me. Even when i'm not adding stuff to my collection on discogs, I notice a daily increase in 'value'.

I've noticed that too, there are a lot of fairly obscure 70's and 80's albums that were routinely going for $20-30 back in 2018 but are now upwards of $70 and I'm starting to lose hope that reasonably priced copies are ever gonna show up again. otoh maybe the end of the pandemic will get people away from their stereos and quell the demand.

Basically, stuff that’s not common as dirt is going crazy. We’ve been asking “are we in a vinyl bubble” for at least a decade now, but this rapid inflation does feel like a huge bubble.

yep everything is a $20 record now, minimum

unless you go to stores that actually have a clue how inventory works. one of my local stores is actually looking for a bigger place!

I wonder if the "price history" tool is doing more harm than good. Sellers seem to be overreacting to the high price, thinking "well if one person paid that much maybe someone else will", or more accurately "maybe someone will pay 20%-50% more". I noticed the Sparks LP Hello Young Lovers was listed around $80 or so, then someone paid $110 for it, and now the only copy is listed at $250. cool economic ecosystem you got there

I mean that's what I was talking about, however the shocking development is that the higher price IS the accurate market price according to recent sales. That's why I'm begrudgingly forced to revise my long held view on these opportunistic vinyl sellers from "delusional" to "savvy" until this current value spike bubble bursts. Really difficult to fault someone for selling something at a price a buyer is willing to pay. Problem is we're at the beginning of that now. Median prices haven't updated yet because the mass rise in value is only a few sales deep on the majority of the examples in my own collection. But it's the case across the board, across genre. Vintage market looks like it's going to get very expensive once everyone catches on if sold prices continue to skyrocket, and all we'll be left with is the FOMO competition to buy the latest limited reissue or new release before it sells out and subsequently forever live at an inflated resale value.

well two things I suspect are driving that right now are 1) the pandemic, which is forcing people to take up insular and weird collectors' hobbies and 2) that lacquer factory burning down, which seems to have caused a shortage of new records, and from what I've heard it's taking albums up to 3 additional months to get pressed because there's such a backlog right now. which means things there's potentially a big market for can't get repressed - I can think of a lot of Bandcamp shit that would quickly sell out an additional run of 1000 or whatever but they're so backed up it's just not worth doing at the moment. so existing copies just go for 3-4x the original price and occasionally even sell which puts dollar signs in everyone's eyes.

Vintage market looks like it's going to get very expensive once everyone catches on if sold prices continue to skyrocket, and all we'll be left with is the FOMO competition to buy the latest limited reissue or new release before it sells out and subsequently forever live at an inflated resale value.

this feels otm. lately ive caught myself being tempted to pull the trigger on stuff for more than i want to pay, under the assumption that 5-10 years from now the market is only going to be more insane

...which of course becomes a self fulfilling prophecy

Yeah I've been resisting the urge to recalibrate what I find to be a comfortable price to pay for certain things. Too many variables to consider- rarity vs. general inflation vs. the market (covered above) vs. condition etc.

end of the day this is an pretty hot market right now so it seems inevitable that a bunch of pressing plants are gonna open up to ride the wave and perhaps even start undercutting each other. it might take a few years but I feel like there's too much money to be made right now for things to just...stay like this

Hello I still use discogs for cataloging my collection, indeed discogs still exists and has not imploded.

Come, look at all the plastic and junk I own

then show me your junk...

...

Brick and mortar stores that price based on discogs as gospel are going to just be silly... everything 2nd hand is going to be like $50 and up, but not because they're delusional but because they're savvy. The only stores that will be worth going to are the ones that are savvy but actually mindful about the important difference between online marketplace and local clientele.

this has absolutely held true, two years later. I'm finding the baseline price for your bog-standard 80's albums to be at a minimum $20, sometimes higher. Of course even new albums now seem to be priced at $39.99 half the time.

yep a used Gaucho was $20 at my local been-around-since-the-70s store the other day, we joked about it

it's probably gone now

i bought an album from a record store for $35 AUD yesterday that is normally $100+ when I see it at fairs - i think the store owner looked it up on discogs and saw “marketplace: 2 available from $30” so priced it based on that - if he had bothered to click through, the cheap one was badly damaged and the next one was $120

mentioned because discogs-influenced pricing at record stores is soooo boring and takes the fun out of it - so on the odd occasion a record slips through, it feels like a win

shops in more savvy markets (like the bay area) definitely price under discogs and ebay prices on the whole because they aren't stupid. I spent a lot of time in Rapid City SD over the last two years though and there were two record shops there; both with surprisingly good stock considering the location, but one in particular absolutely went with the highest prices on discogs for fucking everything. I mean, 80's issue Siouxsie records (which admittedly are kind of hard to find now) for $65.

I've been a little disappointed in my old boss from the shop I used to work at - he prices stuff 5-10 above discogs median with the thought that he can reduce aged inventory if need be and get away with better margins in the meantime, but it's deflating for consumers like me that are hip to actual going rates. Like, yes median discogs + shipping = comparable cost in the end but should go without saying you reward your in-store shoppers the ability to save hypothetical shipping fees to thereby facilitate more frequent visits. He's always been a bit too meticulous about margins at the detriment to a bigger picture strategy.

I will say that overall I've seen a little downtick in resale sold prices amongst stuff in my collection compared to my posts upthread from a couple years ago when people were pulling the trigger on really high sticker prices across the board. Hopefully things level off a little. Speaking about 2nd hand stuff specifically.