What's Worth More on the Open Market - Your Records or Your Audio Gear

imho, with some obvious exceptions (original blue note, parlophone beatles, etc.), the value of record collections is very small.  Also, the time and effort required to sell them is enormous: inspecting, grading, listing, 
packing, shipping, correspondence, returns, and so on.  As others have noted, anything other than mint condition stuff is usually virtually worthless, and the market continues to shrink, as audiophiledom dies off.

If you live much longer, your heirs will be streaming everything and will have no idea why anyone would possess thousands of pounds of discs that take up so much space.  What will happen is that your heirs will sell them en masse, at pennies on the dollar, to a record seller, to get rid of them. They will not educate themselves and go to the effort to sell them individually.  I won't even do that myself; life is too short.

Some categories are essentially unsellable, e.g., opera.  After repeatedly trying to sell my collection (about 1000 mint discs) and receiving no interest at all, I eventually gave them away for almost nothing.  In retrospect, I should have just donated them to the local opera society.

As much as most old gear depreciates (again, with exceptions, e.g. Mac,AR) it still tends to have some residual value if it is in nearly pristine shape.   I recently took several pieces to Goodwill (MIT tube terminator cables, a fine but 30-year-old DB Systems preamp). how much effort is it worth to get a few hundred bucks for something?  Not much. You'd be  lucky to be working for $10 an hour - if you find a buyer.

I wouldn't invest much in reissues, except for things you just have to have. Most don't sound very good and will not ever sell for anything near their original price.

I've been getting rid of records for years.  I've only got 600-700 left.  They are probably close to worthless.
I still find myself buying cds in spite of subscribing to two streaming services.  For the past year I've had the thought that each cd I buy is another object my kids will have to dispose of when I die. 

My kids are not into owning music. 

Years, actually decades, ago J Gordon Holt (if you don't know who he was then never mind) commented if one's record collection was worth more than their components then they were a music lover; if the components were worth more then they were an audiophile.

Lew, that your friend could sell 2,000 LPs for $20K is astounding.  Could that have been a single buyer?

Shocked at that ratio which equates to $10 an album. Must have been a huge amount of spectacular rare mint numbers.

Even though I know I have some tasty pressings I still just think in terms of $1 per album if they were sold as a wholesale lot ( if I am lucky!). Anything else might net more but possibly a disproportionate amount of time and effort to sell.

Gear is usually easier to value at any given time although selling is becoming harder and harder as the market shrinks and disposable income becomes, well less disposable.

I’ve got about 4k albums and my collection would hit about $10 per, as an average. As a minimum, even. ie, about 50 records in the mix that street price out at ~$200-700.

I know someone who has about +10k albums and they would fetch about $20-30 per, minimum. If not notably higher. All blues-jazz originals, for the most part. I mean, I could go to his house, pull a record randomly, blindfolded, and be looking at a street price of $25-50, for just about any one of them. He’s got many a $500 record, just due to rarity alone.

the fact that these records are held is part of their valuation in current times. If the market becomes flooded with the desirable albums, then their values plummet dramatically. Which is what happens when the senior collectors start to really get the boot from the planet.

They say that there is a huge high priced real estate glut coming in the US, as the baby boomers all sell off, and move to retirement homes. Approximately 21 million high value homes, they say. (just some light reading, never really did more than skim the article)