One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is: “How much is this album worth?”.
This is an impossible question for me to answer taking into account all the ways people buy and sell albums.
However, here is how I value records that I’m interested in knowing more about.
I start by searching completed auctions on ebay. Ebay, for me, is a good place to review current real market values. I check the completed auctions and compare the number of copies on the market, prices and what copies have and or have not sold for.
If you do not see your album listed on ebay at all, that does not necessarily mean that you’ve got a rare and valuable record on your hands. You may have an obscure record with limited appeal to a small number of collectors.
I might tell you your album is worth $10, but you find your album listed online for a much higher price? Prices are fixed for an entire host of reasons which are not tied to real market value.
There are a great number of online resources to search for examples of your album, including gemm.com, amazon.com, and esty.com. Many record dealers also have online storefronts. But, again, prices are all over the place, some prices can be absurdly high, so these sites are only good if you are the buyer who knows what they are looking for.
Now, I back up to the issue of rarity vs. obscurity. I blog few rare records. Mostly I blog obscure records. Some record stores I visit don’t really know what to do with the records I like. Some dealers to actually throw out or refuse to buy the records that I value. Other dealers, both online and brick-and-mortar sellers, over-value the records I enjoy. Copies of albums I’m interested in literally sit in record stores for years untouched. What this tells me is that the some records are obscure and valued, but by a select few collectors who value them differently. So, if you see a copy of a record on a blog, that does not mean that the record is a pricey collectible (although it could be), it may more likely mean that the record is simply obscure.
Condition also drives value, but I’m not going to get into condition issues here.
