The Rare Record Price Guide 2024

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Selling valuable vinyl records can be just as rewarding as buying them, especially when you know that your unwanted LPs are going to enthusiasts who will cherish them for years. Whether you’re looking to sell some Velvet Underground records you have, or you’re just looking to see what the potential value of your favorite Led Zeppelin album is, all it takes is a bit of research. Many vinyl records can be issued multiple times over a period of many years. Take the Beatles as a great example. They originally issued their LP’s in the 1960’s, there were then re-runs as early as 1969, many issues through the 1970’s and 1980’s and then even special anniversary issues in the 1990’s right up to present day. The issue of the record can have a significant impact on the value that it holds. 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 Categories In general, a copy of an album that is still in original, unopened shrink wrap will sell for a lot more money than one that is in opened condition, even if the opened copy has not been played.

If a record routinely sells for a lot of money, there is a good chance that the title in question has been counterfeited. Many albums by the Beatles, along with other popular artists such as the Yardbirds, Elvis Presley, and Pink Floyd, have been counterfeited. In a few cases, such as the Beatles album Introducing the Beatles, counterfeit copies may actually outnumber the real ones. While all of the factors listed above are important when it comes to evaluating a vinyl record’s value, perhaps none is as important as the condition of the record. Most mass produced records sold over the past 60 years or so have been poorly cared for by their owners. They may have been played on low-quality equipment, stored outside of their covers, and handled by their playing surfaces, rather than their edges. 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 As with acetates, test pressings are usually used for evaluation purposes by record company personnel, though they are occasionally sent out as promotional items. As they are rather unusual and limited in production to just a handful of copies, test pressings are highly regarded and sought out by collectors. Sometimes, test pressings may contain different versions of one or more songs from the commercially released albums. This can also add to their value.

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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. 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. In the case of records that are common to moderately rare, anything copy that isn’t in something close to new condition may have little to no value at all.

On rare occasions, acetates have been sent to radio stations as promotional items when regular pressings were not yet available.

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We have written an extensive article about the Beatles Butcher cover. You can read it here. (new window) However, it can be tougher to figure out exactly what year the specific pressing of an album was released, especially if that particular album was issued pre-1973. On top of that, a record from the 1950s or early 1960s will often be worth more than one from the 70s or 80s. 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.

The topic of mono vs. stereo is a complex one, and we have previously cover that in detail in another article which you can read here. (new window.)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. This so-called “Butcher Cover” is perhaps the best known record in all of record collecting, and copies have sold for thousands of dollars.

It also really important to consider how you want to sell your record collection. There really can be potentially two different values on a record collection. One is the individual selling value and the other is the bulk selling value. What ever type of collection you have I am always keen for you to get in touch. Of course I may want to buy your record collection, but I’m also happy to just offer some advice and options as to what you could do with it depending on your circumstances. Please do get in touch with me here. 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. On other occasions, a record may be issued only as a promotional item. Such albums may be live recordings, made for radio broadcast, or perhaps compilation albums, again intended to stimulate airplay. These “promo-only” releases are usually sought after by collectors, though the interest in them will be directly related to the interest in the artist. A promo-only Rolling Stones record, for example, will attract far more interest from collectors than one by Andy Williams. On the other hand, even records that sold well when new can become scarce in time, especially when one takes the condition of the record into account. Albums by Elvis Presley and the Beatles sold millions of copies when they were first released, but finding nice original copies of those records now can be difficult, as many have been thrown away or damaged through heavy play or abuse.whose price guide books have been the authority on collectibles values since 1985. TThe searchable database consists of Sometimes an artist will release records on a small label and then move to a larger one. In these cases, their earlier releases tend to be more collectible than their later ones. The country group Alabama released a couple of albums on the small LSI label under the name “Wild Country” before changing their name and moving to the large RCA label. As the records by the group issued by RCA sold quite well, they tend to sell for modest prices. The two albums on LSI, on the other hand, are quite rare and sell for several hundred dollars or more when they’re offered for sale. Autographed records that are personalized, such as “To Jane, best wishes…” tend to sell for less money than those that simply have the artist’s signature on it. When it comes to musical groups and autographs, albums that are autographed by the entire group will sell for substantially higher prices than those with the signatures of some, but not all, members.