Selling a Vinyl Collection in the 2020s

I have been buying vinyl record collections professionally for 23 years as of Winter 2023, and I have to say it has changed quite a bit in that time. In the year 2000 when I started my first shop (Lotus Land Records in Milwaukee), vinyl as a listening format was near an all-time low - with CDs being most people’s preferred format. All cars came equipped with CD decks, so cassettes also were in end-times zone.

There was still a thriving vinyl-collecting scene, but it was an underground world full of niche pockets - mostly buyers looking for ultra rare and obscure titles. Huge-selling rock titles on vinyl (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc) had little to no demand. And since they were around in abundance the supply/demand curve brought their value to near zero. As a buyer this typically meant that I would see a collection of let’s say 400 LPs and really could only buy maybe 10 or less, as the only titles buyers anywhere wanted (we were selling online already so had access to global record collecting markets) were the rarest titles out of a collection. This left the sellers confused and disappointed as most likely just wanted to get rid of the whole mass from their garage/attic and were disappointed to see that after we went through the collection, it basically still was the same size.

With the last few years’ increase in turntable sales and newly-christened LP collectors around in droves, the interest in more mainstream / famous artist titles on LP has greatly expanded. To show someone who is considering selling a collection what this means for them, I think a simple contrasting scenario may be the easiest illustration -

Seller has a 300 piece LP collection in generally nice condition. The titles are a mixture of classic rock from the 60s-80s with some easy listening inherited from a parent/grandparent, some kids music, and a few hard rock/punk records from a phase in college.

WHAT I CAN BUY AND OFFER IN 2004 since there are no buyers for common classic rock in this era, and there wasn’t (and still isn’t!) buyers for easy listening or kids LPs, we can only use the hard rock/punk LPs of which there are only 10 or so. We can pay about $45 total with hopes to sell them for $80-$100 total. The rest we can’t use as there are no buyers.

WHAT I CAN BUY AND OFFER IN 2023

We can take 200 classic rock titles as there are now buyers for them, and the hard rock/punk - so 210 of the 300 LPs are usable. We can offer $545 with hopes to sell them all for $1000 or so total. The 90 easy listening and kids records we cannot use so we either advise the seller to take those to Goodwill and take a receipt for a tax write off or we offer to take them to Goodwill for them, as we cannot sell them they do not contribute to the offer.

So in 2023 this seller has made $500 more and basically got rid of the whole clutter. And all because there has been more mainstream interest in vinyl!

When you’re ready to sell your collection CALL ANDY!