Turntable got absolutely crushed by CD

We should only be interested in those who might become audiophiles, the rest have nothing to do with us. And for those few it is the same as for us - original pressings LPs for analog recordings and cds for digital recordings. Later probably computer instead of cds but not yet.
Buy less but of higher quality. Yes, buying records on line is difficult, but if VG+ is good enough it's not too bad. Average cost for me is about $25-$30 per record plus shipping but I mostly buy from Japan and Europe. 

I asked my young 40 year old neighbor, if any of his friends who he went to college with, were into records or CD's; "Neither", he replied, "They're into streaming"

I have my doubts about all these young people into records;

In contrast to that: I've been surprised by the number of my kid's friends - and the kid of my friends - who are aware of vinyl records and who play or buy them.  Just tonight I was out with a pal and both his sons, 14 and 17, played vinyl records.
These days when my kids bring over friends they aren't mystified when they notice my turntable.  Rather it's more "Oh yeah, we have records too, my parents have a turntable."   I never heard that until recently.
Also, while there has been a second hand record store around the corner from me for decades, in the past few years it's been joined by many other new record stores, so now I have 4 record stores within about a mile of my home.   All seem to be thriving.  Quite a change from the 90's and early 2000s!

The OP has legitimate high end analog, and because he didn't adjust it properly, or have the right cartridge, it sucks; give me a break with all these young people buying records. Why?
and why don't statistics, such as the one's Tomycy61 posted on 12-03-2018 9:42pm support this?

Pardon me, but I can think of nothing dumber than buying records for those so called "starter turntables" like bikes with training wheels. Records are expensive, and without an expensive high end analog rig, plus the knowledge to put it all together, they do not sound as good as CD's played on a cheap CD player; not to mention all the other headaches that go with records.

"Just the facts ma'am, nothing but the facts"

Some people just too old to understand what’s going on with the young generation. Nobody cares about the quality, record collecting is not about the sound quality for most of the people, it’s about the physical media format which is just cool. They are happy to play vinyl even on portable plastic turntables like those Columbia GP-3 or Fisherprice. As i said earlier: most of the adult record collectors doesn’t care about equipment, they are happy with $300 Technics SL1200mkII and $80 Shure m44-7, but these people own many thousand mega rare record and they are happy to buy more, it’s just like a habbit. This is called crate digging. These scene is all about vinyl, there is no room for CDs or digital. It’s a culture and smart kids want to be a part of this culture. They already have free digital in their life forever. Vinyl is something unique.

It’s like analog film photography, it’s just so cool, much more complicated than digital photography. Have you seen teenagers with analog film cameras taking pictures? This is another cultural thing. It doesn’t matter that every iPhone can make an HD video and amazing pictures. There is a huge community of youth analog film lovers in every country, it’s an art form.

Personally i totally agree that to make vinyl sounds better we need an expensive analog equipment and knowledge to choose them, but this is only a part of the life of the audiophiles (very small community, another expensive hobby for crazy people like us).