How much are my records worth?

It is a question I am asked a lot - and the answer is it depends. The only people buying LP records these days are collectors (rather than music lovers), and the collectors market is very discriminating and does not always seem logical to the casual observer (the same is true is any other collecting area: stamps, books, porcelain etc) - a small difference in the item can mean a huge difference in its value.

One of the main factors with records is if the record is an original issue - most recordings were reissued several times by the company that recorded it. If the original is extraordinarily rare, the reissue may be worth at most 10% of the value of the original. Otherwise, reissues are not generally wanted - not because they are bad records, there is simply very little demand for them. Similarly, the label design is important. Record companies often changed the design of the label they put on the disc itself - collectors always want the earliest possible pressing, so a second label of a record will be worth only 20-25% of that of the first label.

To have any value, the record must play faultlessly. A record with a sounding scratch, surface noise, warp or other damage is worthless, unless it is very very rare and desirable, when it may be worth 10-20% of a mint copy. Visible marks which do not sound will reduce the value of a record, as will damage to the sleeve or box.

That said, we do pay the best prices in the country for rare and desirable LPs. Here are some of the labels we are keen to buy:

Decca (UK pressings only)

Stereo records with catalogue numbers starting SXL 2___ (the number may be on the front of the sleeve, and the top right corner of the back of the sleeve). We pay £5-£100+ for these (more for the Mozart Opera sets), but opera highlights are not wanted. The label should have the letters FFSS in a circle at the 12 o'clock position on the label.

We pay £2-£50 for records starting SXL 6___ with the same label as above. We do not generally buy SXL 6000s individually if the label has the word 'Decca' in a rectangle at the 12 o'clock, except for certain violinists.

Decca Mono records with the catalouge numbers starting LXT. Some of these can be valuable, mainly certain violin and cello records (up to £200) . Most orchestral and vocal records in this series are not particularly wanted individually. If there was a stereo release of the recording, then the mono will be worthless.

Columbia (UK pressings only)

We pay £5-£300+ for records with numbers starting SAX on the original labels (Messiah highlights not wanted). The original label up to SAX 2538 is a very light blue with a silver webbed design overlayed. After SAX 2538, the original label is red and black with the Columbia 'magic notes' label in a semi-circle in the top half of the label. Most of the post-SAX 2538 records are at the lower end of the price range, but some (mainly violin records) are quite valuable.

Mono 33CX - Again, some of these can be valuable, mainly certain violin, cello and some piano records (up to £500), but most are not. Most orchestral and vocal records in this series are not particularly wanted individually. If there was a stereo release of the recording, it will be worthless (If the cover states 'MONO' on the front, this will usually mean a stereo version was available - there are, however many others done in stereo which do not give this handy hint)

HMV / EMI (UK pressings only)

HMV stereo records have ASD numbers. 3-digit numbers are the earliest releases - up to and including ASD 575 should have a whitish label with a gold band around the perimiter - for these we pay £5-£100+ (Gilbert & Sullivan not wanted). If you are lucky enough  to own ASD 429, we will pay a four-figure sum for it.
Records with number between ASD 576 and ASD 655 should have a red and black label with Nipper in a Semi-Circle - we buy most of these at prices from £4-£150 (more for ASD 602-3). If the label has nipper in a rectangle, it will not generally be wanted unless the record is extremely rare.

We do not buy ASD 4-digit numbers individually, except with Milstein, Du Pre and some Barbirolli.

Mono ALP (also 10" BLP) - Again, some of these can be valuable, mainly certain violin and cello records (up to £400) and those with conductor Furtwangler, but most are not. Most orchestral and vocal records in this series are not particularly wanted individually. We do not buy CLP or 10" DLP except with violinist Ida Haendel, which can be valuable. We also buy COLH 'Great Recordings of the Century' series, but ONLY Instrumental (not vocal) recordings.

Philips (Dutch or UK pressings)

We buy most Stereo Philips with a maroon label (not red) and the words 'Hi-Fi Stereo'. Numbers are SABL, SAL or might start with 835 . Records with Grumiaux, Starker, Rostropovich, Elman, Auclair, Szigeti and Haskil are worth most and we will buy later red label SAL, 6500 series with these artists.
There are not many mono Philips which are valuable, but those which are will also feature the above artists.

Deutsche Grammophon (German pressings are best)

Stereo DG with numbers starting 136, 138 and 139 may be of interest - they must have a ring of 'tulips' around the perimeter of the label. Karajan records are not generally wanted, but we will buy most others. Best prices are for those with Martzy, Morini, Fournier, Rostal, Mravinsky, Schneiderhan, Streich.
DG monos are mainly of interest if they feature Martzy (violin) or Mainardi (cello). Most others will not be wanted indivually

RCA (UK pressings)

Look out for stereo SB numbers starting with a 2, most have the words 'Living Stereo' prominently on the front of the sleeve. We buy most of these with the dark red label with ALL the writing in silver, except Rubinstein and van Cliburn.

There are some other records which have value, mainly with some (but not all) violinists and Cellists on labels such as Telefunken, Brunswick, Parlophone and continetal.

It is immensly difficult to distill several years worth of experience and knowledge into a few short paragraphs, but it will hopefully give you some idea about what to look out for - a more detailed buying list is available to genuine, regular sellers.

When you are looking for records, you will see there a lots of classical records about (I personally view thousands every week), only a very small percentage of which fall into the catergories I have mentioned. They are worth looking out for though, especially as the good records do tend to be found together.

How Much do you pay?

We generally pay 25-50% of the 'selling price' of a record, with the 50% being for records with a selling price of £120 or more (or lower priced items we are confident will sell quickly). Doesn't sound like much? There are several factors involved here:

1) The selling price you see listed is the maximum that we will possibly acheive - more records sell for less than the listed price, either in large orders which attrach a (sometimes substantial) discount, or because a record will have to be reduced if it does not sell after several months
2) There will probably be damaged records in every collection, no matter how well cared-for it was. We find 5-10% of records we have already visually inspected once will have some kind of damage. Most are spotted before they get sent out to customers, but a small percentage do get returned to us (about 80% of customer returns have no VISIBLE sign of damage)
3) Whenever we buy a collection, we know that over 50% will remain unsold after 6 months, and most of those will still remain unsold after 1 year. Classical records are notoriously slow-moving stock, and storage space costs.

We will generally not want to buy records listed at under £15 individually (at a sell rate of less than 10%, it is simply not worth the effort of catalogouing, storing etc).
The price paid will also depend on the saleablilty of a record: if a particular record is already listed in our catalouge, we will obviously already have at least one copy. We may have many more (we have 10-15 copies each of certain records) - if we already have several unsold copies of a record, the price we can pay for another will obviously be lower, if it is wanted at all (we generally stop buying a particular record when we have 5 unsold copies in stock). However, there are certain records which are always listed in our catalogue because they always sell and we will buy as many copies as we can (these are not necessarily the most valuable records - most fall in the £15-£30 range). We will generally be most keen to buy records on the main labels listed above that are not already in our catalouge (although there are always some which we do not list because we know they are too common to sell).

Won't I be able to get more selling the records myself?

This is a VERY specialised market, and most of the collectors in this market are located outside of the UK. We have spent several years (and thousand of pounds each year on advertising), building up a customer base of collectors around the world.

If you have a shop in the UK without this specialist international customer base, a realistic selling price would be about 50% or less of the selling prices on this site. You might expect to sell 10%-50% (if it is a really good collection) of them in a reasonable period of time. There are not many collectors in the UK who actively seek classical LPs and who are willing to pay high prices for them - most of the people out actively seeking records in this country are 'scouts' looking for things which are underpriced so they can sell on to dealers for a profit. Why not cut out the middleman - we will pay 50% of our selling price on the higher price items (and saleable lower priced records) and will buy ALL of the records in the right catergories.

If you have seen a 'private collector' advertising that he will buy complete collections, you might assume that a collector would want to pay more for his records. There is no such thing as a private collector who buys collections for himself - he will simply take out the few records he wants and sell the remainder to a dealer (usually for more than he paid for the complete collection). WE STRONGLY ADVISE AGAINST SELLING INDIVIDUAL ITEMS FROM A COLLECTION - anyone who buys a few records from a collection will be removing the items that might have made that collection worth buying as a whole - read this article for an illustration. We may occasionaly offer to buy individual items from a collection if it contains a very small number of desirable records amongst a large quantity of really quite unsaleable items, and advise that the remainder be donated to a charity shop or similar, but only if we are sure that nobody would want to buy the collection as a whole. We do not buy collections that have been cherry-picked, or left-over stock from shops, car boot sales etc.

Fancy setting up your own website, mail order list, or selling by auction? Have you any idea of what you are letting yourself in for? Let me tell you a story: When I first started in this business, I had been gathering together good stock for about 2 years (when I realised the dealer I had previously been selling to was paying me 20% of his selling price across the board, whether it was a £15 record or £500 record), and had some very good quality stock. I spent several weeks putting together my first catalogue, placed my first advert in a specialist record collectors magazine with a worldwide circulation and sat back waiting for the flood of enquiries and orders. I got 2 responses. 1 of those actually bought from me, but he was a dealer and cleared me out of all the good stock I had underpriced, thereby removing all the 'tempters' that might have encouraged other people to place orders.
You will need a constant supply of new stock to keep the few customers you have buying, be able to deal with their questions and complaints, how will you accept payment, how will you get the records to your customers? All in all, it is extremely labour intensive, very time consuming and only suitable to if you have a lot of spare time and are prepared to put in a lot of effort. A lot of people find it far better to concentrate of the fun part of looking for records (which can be like trasure hunting) without the more tiresome aspects of running a business - as long as you buy carefully (quality, not quantity is the key), we will buy most (if not all) of your records at a fair price.

I hope this does not seem too negative a picture - it is intended as a realistic view of that actual state of the market, as found during several years of hard-learnt lessons. We will always pay a fair price for saleable records, and will collect sizeable collections. email us if you have some records to sell - please include the information requested on the buying page.