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How much do large Vinyl collections go for these days?

What is vinyl pricing doing these days? Is good used vinyl appreciating or depreciating?

I have a collection of about 1700 Jazz LP's. 95%+ are VG+ or better (I bought them that way and clean records every time on a Loricraft)

About 500 are earlier (50's, 60's) issues like Blue note w42, NY USA, a few Lex Ave, Bergenfield Prestige, Columbia, Savoy, Verve, Riverside, Atlantic etc.

The rest are OJC reissues, and other later good jazz labels like Enja, Soul Note, Inner City Mo fi etc.

Many were purchased from big jazz collections on Ebay over the years. About 20% were purchased new and have seen only a few plays (given there are so many). The rest were mostly purchased from the Jazz Record Center in NYC and anyone who knows them is well acquainted with the quality of their records.

I estimate I paid about 50K in total for these, so an average of $30. The best stuff was $100 or so on Ebay. The OJC's were $8 years ago new from Acoustic Sounds. Would you hold or sell?

I know the answer is "it depends" but any other insights are appreciated.


128x128jyprez
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toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone
840 posts
 
I've sold stuff on discogs.. You may not get as high a price as an auction on eBay, but that's also not a guaranteed price either. For rare stuff, discogs is priced accordingly, though, so you will get a higher price for rare/in demand discs without worrying about an auction petering out below what you were hoping to get.
miner42
709 posts
 
I recently sold by late brother-in-laws collection to a record store.  1326 LPs for $3000.  Most were VG+ condition (he played once and recorded to cassette).
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Always sell to the end user.

sbank's avatar
sbank
3,378 posts
 
You frame the question "hold or sell" as if you have a liquid commodity that is sold as easily as a NYSE holding. Records are more like penny stocks. If you want retail value, you have to sell individually, investing time and energy and sometimes not finding a buyer at all. 

If you sell the collection to a record store they will offer you about 20% of what they expect to get for it over time. If you want to sell retail online to get close retail, consider about a half hour of your time for each album to be photographed, listed, packed, shipped. Consider ~$1 for packing materials each, and 10% or more selling/payment fees if you want to use eBay or similar large market. 
When I've evaluated collections to buy for purpose of reselling, I try to figure that I can clear $20/hour of my labor and if the collection allows that after expenses I will buy it. Many who inherit or decide to sell overvalue their collections because of their emotional attachments and the waking up process often takes a while. With classical and especially opera, the values are less and trending quickly towards zero. Cheers,
Spencer
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