Vinyl Buyers: The Premium Price Vinyl v. Cheap Vinyl Ratio


The market share of vinyl in new recordings is driven to a large degree by willingness of vinyl buyers to pay premium prices. Nevertheless, there is a huge pool of cheap vinyl out there; records that sold millions so there's hundreds of thousands of copies on the market and on down. To listeners who buy a lot of vinyl these days, what is the ratio of your budget between premium price/collector price albums vs. low price albums?

Personally, when I buy vinyl it's usually things that never came out on CD, which is often quite reasonably priced, but the sticking point is the price of pandemic era shipping, which is staggering. There was a seller of English folk music on Discogs who offered free shipping on orders over the equivalent of US $250, so I started tossing things and tossing things into the shopping cart (or basket, as they call it in Blighty) to get up to that figure. I finally wound up spending $350. I would say about $150 of that was collector-price items.
heretobuy
Buy all your vinyl pressed prior to 1982. That way you are guaranteed to get analog pressings.
The Record Archives in Rochester NY has vinyl as far as the eye can see. I get lost in there for hours each time I go. I search for old albums not pressed from digital sources, prior to 1982 I believe. There is a lot of pure analog stuff available. Just gotta practice diligence.
millercarbon is right about better records. Their prices WILL blow you away. Crazy. But I’ve never bought a record, nor will I, from there so I can’t comment on value.

What I’ve learned through the years is to research the best mastering of a particular record. Hoffman forums will help with that. Sometimes a remastered LP sounds a ton better than an original. Sometimes vice versa.

If you like jazz, buy Kevin Gray remastered Tone Poets and Blue Note Classic records
for $25-30 each. Buy from Amazon as they have a great return policy on any defective records.

I buy a ton of remastered records, some inexpensive some not. But you need to be selective about it.

Analogue Productions sells a lot of remastered LP’s for reasonable to slightly higher prices. Some they remaster and press with their company QRP, others are from good companies that do their own remastering and have outside pressing plants.

Discogs has sellers selling every kind of music. You just have to be certain of proper grading.

If you are looking for $5 used LP’s, sign up for Steve Hoffmans Forum and scan the classified ads. You’ll have a lot to choose from. You can usually count on proper grading and fair prices.

Jeff Beck Wired is one of my favorite albums. If you can, buy the Analogue Productions 45 rpm sets. Unbelievable. And their Blow By Blow 45 set is even mo' better. 
@ghdprentice , exactly my point. I have compared reissues with originals with digital files and as far as I can tell, using electrostatic speakers, it is a toss up. It depends on the quality of the pressing and the mastering. As far as digital is concerned going in and out of 24/192 is totally invisible. If a modern master is done correctly from a digital file it can be better than the original. It depends entirely on the engineer. Audiophiles were initially smitten by Telarc's early recordings. 
Vinyl adds "something" to the experience. You can call it distortion or whatever but it is like catnip to the human brain. Playing records via a digital front end takes absolutely nothing away from the experience. 
Pressings of popular music in the 70's and 80's, even new ones can be pretty bad. Modern pressings made with care can be better, quieter. Paying $300 for an old used record when you can get a modern copy for $24 dollars IMHO is not a great way to collect music when you could have gotten 12 records for the price of one. At the worst, if the music is good, the difference between an old pressing or a reissue is trivial. The reissue may even be better. When you can get used records for $5 from a collection you can fish through picking out the ones that were handled with care (no finger prints or scratches) it might well be worth it. I won't do it but I can understand the attraction. $300? No way Jay.