Newbie question - equipment with good resale value

McIntosh

Good question.

I have been playing the A'gon buy and try game now for a few years. First, you will need a membership to tbe A'gon Bluebook. The price graphs there will answer the question you raise. I tend to avoid items with minimal transction activity.

Almarg has good advice and Tvad and Tzh21y list some names. The only sure-fire way to "know" the history of prices and get a feeling for where items trade is to get a subscription to the Audiogon BlueBook, to understand that it only works for relatively liquidly-traded items, and to understand that it does not work.

The other way to get good equipment at prices which will not cause you to lose too much money if and when you sell it is to buy what I would call "soon to be but not yet classic" gear at 20-30cts on the original dollar. I have bought some 20-30yr old equipment at that kind of prices, and all the well-regarded pieces I have bought have been real prizes. Sometimes really excellent equipment just loses its fan appeal, drifts down to that kind of price after a decade or two, and then it represents absolutely fantastic value for money.

Definitely good advice above. Buy used from reputable sellers and you will not loose much if anything on smart investments that way. Two more omissions from above:

Cary and Teres

A couple of other tube amp names might be AirTight and VTL. As for TTs, the list of good TTs goes on and on. Basis, VPI, and Teres mentioned above are American-made and currently supported. Some of the Japanese-made direct drive turntables of yesteryear are excellent value for money.

Whatever you do on TTs, unless you already have a large collection of records and a decently long history of playing them, I would start with a set-up which is easy to use and would be attractive on resale to someone like yourself. If you decide to go further, it will be easy to sell and you can move up in the chain cleanly and without buyer's remorse. If you are a curious type by nature, by far the largest "expense" in turntables is the time it takes to find records, clean them, set up your table/arm/cart, and then tweak it every now and then to see what it sounds like with the VTA changed, VTF changed, etc, then change carts to see what a different cart sounds like, etc. If you buy a turntable used at the low end of that TT's price range, you'll get out of it for not much less than you paid for it plus shipping, almost no matter what it is.