Your Old Records Might Be Worth More Than You Think.

by Rob Goss

When it gets to the point when your records haven’t been played for a decade and you feel the space they consume could be put to better use, you might be tempted to bid them farewell.

But, before you sell the lot for $10 at a garage sale, or even put them in the trash, you might want to check that you’re not throwing money away.

With record collecting booming, records from the fifties and sixties often sell for $5 or $10 a piece with many rarer items and items in particularly good condition reaching much more.

 

While it is unlikely that you will stumble on a mint condition copy of the legendary Beatles butcher’s album or an early Elvis single on Sun records (each of which easily sell for four figures), you might still get some nice surprises when you dust off your vinyl.

How to find out what your records are worth:

If you have a collection numbering in the thousands, you should consider getting your records appraised by a reputable dealer.

 

However, in most cases you can get a rough idea of your collection’s value by yourself without spending much, if any, money doing so.

For those of you who are willing to spend $20 to $30, you should pick up one of the Goldmine Price Guides for US albums and singles.

 

They contain all the information you will need to identify the records you have and then accurately grade their condition and work out the price dealers typically charge collectors for them, which is of course much higher than any dealer will pay you.

If you don’t want to spend anything valuing your records, you can get a fairly accurate idea of the prices collectors will pay other collectors, which is more than a dealer would pay, by checking out the end of auction prices at Ebay.

Of course, there is no guarantee that you will unearth anything of value when you trawl through your old records, but you will probably unearth a few old memories and a few long forgotten names.

 

Either way, you have nothing to lose from dusting off your records, and maybe, just maybe, you will find something that will have collectors drooling.


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