Is It Time To Sell My Vinyl Rig?
Some old vinyl is just that... poor mastering, poor recording process, and worse, too many pressings per... I have a few direct disks that stun me regularly with their presence, detail, and sheer impact. My secondary-favs are some digital recordings (there were a few great ones) that were then sent to vinyl with love and care. I want a better streamer/DAC also, but how I listen to that source is vastly different than vinyl. |
Just to clarify a bit, I would to some degree regret selling my table and phono amp. Additionally, I'm not comparing mono analogue to stereo digital, rather I'm saying that the quality of my digital front end is so good, that I might not miss playing vinyl all that much. I am limited based on the quality of tonearm, cartridge, etc... If I had the flagship ASR phono stage, a six thousand dollar table and a three thousand dollar cartridge, the competition between digital and analogue would be tighter. Would I prefer to have something versus not having something; that answer to that would likely always be yes. |
chakster, "There are records that goes for £1000+ each!" I took that into account. That would be 1000 records for a million, assuming each record is priced that high. Over 15 years, it is one record sold every six days, or so. So a bit more than one a week. That would certainly make it for less demanding work with packing and shipping. If that were a case, that warehouse for 1000 records would not be that large. Slightly larger closet, if even that much. Maybe "warecloset" instead of "warehouse". Of course, if a person bought real warehouse full of records, let’s say 100 000 of them to sift through and look for those that could be sold for £1000 each, it would make sense, but it would bring us back to a lots of work. Assuming that a person works from Monday to Friday for those 15 years, she/he would have to check about 25 records a day. For a work day of 8 hours, slighly more than 3 records an hour. Slightly less than 20 minutes per record. During that time, a person can pick those expensive ones and sell them, assuming they sell as soon as they are found in the warehouse. Packing and mailing them will take some tome away from checking what is in those 100 000 records so it will have to be more than 3 per hour checked. Still, it does not seem to be that great of a business plan as records bought must have cost some money, too. Not to go into storage space, advertising, etc. And, of course, in my example no millionaire paid any tax anywhere. For that, to become a millionaire, a person has to increase all the above numbers by whatever tax rate is. |
I don’t know what are you trying to say here @glupson ? Only ebay score of Craig Moerer is 229 261 ... Even if each record sold for $10 it’s already over $ 2 000 000 .... Apart from what they sell direct on their own website, also on discogs with another 19636 deals since 2008. Craig and his Records By Mail offers one of the most comprehensive selections of vinyl LPs and 45s available anywhere. Housed in an 8,000 square foot warehouse that currently holds 2 million records, Craig and his talented, dedicated staff at Records By Mail serve music lovers in more than 60 countries. You’d better watch his interview if you want to know more about business model or to see a warehouse full of vintage records. He’s been doing it for entire life. They travel all over USA to buy collections (vinyl lovers dies too). I know very well what i’m talking about, my examples of the price tags for rare soul records is not even maximum, there are northern soul records that cost over $5k each, believe it or not buy they sell those too on auctions. There is a huge and very strong scene for this type of music worldwide. And I have to mention that rare American records are much cheaper in the USA than in UK, Europe or Japan. Vinyl is priceless, digital is free. Even if a reissue of the rare soul record available for £5 it will not affect the price for an original press and it can be 100 times as much. It’s a whole other world that most audiophiles do not understand at all when they discuss digital versus analog! It’s a cultural difference, not sound quality. When people discuss only sound quality they demonstrate their narrow mind. Vinyl still alive not only because of the quality, it’s a culture, people love to go to the stores, flea markets... searching for records because it’s cool, it’s a life style. They can discover music, unknown stuff on vintage vinyl. It’s not nostalgia, because young people are crazy about this process too, they are looking for record NOT because of the sound quality, they already have digital, they are born in digital era, and they want analog. Maybe for retired people vinyl is nostalgia, but people under 30 are into vinyl too (all over the world). This is why streaming can’t replace the analog, never! |
