THE FINAL VINYL DECISION: Finding and buying LPs
If the lure of getting (back) into vinyl collecting and listening is nagging at your music-loving brain, here’s the biggest factor to consider: unlike my early vinyl hunting days, records have become more expensive and harder to find. The pandemic has definitely played its part, there are real materials shortages and supply chain interruptions out there, which are just now starting to ease up, albeit very slowly. Record companies closed most of their vinyl pressing plants when the original vinyl market disappeared in the 80s and 90s. Not many have reopened, at least not yet, and there are reports that the remaining plants are booked solid through 2022 and into 2023 worldwide. Record stores aren’t in every city and shopping mall anymore. If your town has a well-stocked store or two, you’re one of the lucky ones. Bottom line, you really have to want to be into vinyl these days, it’s not the casual lifestyle hobby it used to be. It’s going to take some research and hunting (and luck) to get specific titles, new or old. If you’re one of the fortunate ones who kept your original albums tucked away in an attic or closet somewhere and you just need new equipment to play them on, you’re golden. If not, here’s what you can expect to encounter out in the wild.
• Where are they? - Like I mentioned earlier, if you still have a record store or two in your town, pay them a visit, make friends, ask questions. The staffs in my town are knowledgeable and helpful. If you don’t have a record store nearby, here are some places where I’ve found great stuff.
Barnes & Noble, Target, Best Buy, and Walmart all sell vinyl records these days. None of them have a huge selection, but they usually have the most popular current and classic albums, with a few pleasantly esoteric surprises thrown in. You’ll see a lot of store exclusive color variations in these places, so if you’re needing a copy of, say, Queen’s Greatest Hits, you may end up with a purple or green vinyl version.
There’s Amazon, of course, now one of the world’s biggest sellers of vinyl. Bezos captures yet another local business-threatening market. They stock a gazillion titles at decent prices. What they don’t do is package them right to ship out. I’ve ordered a handful from them, only to have them show up loose in an oversize box with little to no packing. Somehow their business model still works with a huge percentage of returned, damaged vinyl.
Online record stores are a great option if you don’t mind waiting a while to get the LP you paid for. I’ve used The In Groove (www.theingroove.com) a few times, a physical store in Phoenix with a big, impressive online retail website, new records only. My orders have always been shipped in the best protective vinyl LP boxes I’ve seen anywhere and arrived in mint condition. If they’re out of stock on a particular title you’re dying to own, there’s a button you can push to get a text or email when it’s back in stock. The only drawback is they, like all online record sellers, only ship with USPS Media Mail. Keeps the shipping cost down but expect to wait at least 10-14 days to get your order. There are others, like Toad Hall in Illinois and Amoeba Records in California, that get rave reviews, but I don’t have personal experience ordering from them. Mike, owner of The In Groove, got my business by creating one of my all-time favorite YouTube channels.
Yard sales, estate sales, flea markets, thrift stores, secondhand outlets. They’re all a crapshoot, of course. More often than not, you’ll find nothing worthwhile, unless you’re on the lookout for cheesy-looking religious records, they’re everywhere. I never realized so many of them were sold once upon a time. But if you love the thrill of the hunt, every once in a while these places pay off. You’ll find somebody trying to get rid of their dad’s classic jazz collection, or the kids’ old Beatles records that are cluttering up the (now) spare bedroom. And the prices will be way, way, under market value.
The so-called “secondary” market. Primarily eBay and Discogs. Discogs is the world’s Amazon for used records. Serious collectors sell their albums on these sites. Chances are, you’ll be able to find any record you want to add to your collection at either one. Guaranteed it won’t be at a bargain, or even reasonable, price. Product misrepresentation, poor business or shipping practices, indecipherable return policies, everything you’ve come to love about eBay can be found on Discogs, too. My absolute last resort. I’ve bought a couple LPs on Discogs, none on eBay.
Try your local library. Many of them have figured out that vinyl records for borrowing bring new customers into their branches. My experience has been that the records are usually in excellent condition, very few clicks and pops, and the collections are carefully curated to appeal to both casual and more knowledgeable music fans. If you can bring yourself to actually return them, it’s a great way to listen to a lot of LPs for free.
• New releases – The good news: unlike 20 years ago, pretty much every new album by a major artist gets a vinyl release these days. The bad news: there won’t be nearly enough made to satisfy everybody who might want a copy. The rule of thumb for that new Taylor Swift or Foo Fighters record you just gotta have is to buy it as soon as you see it, in-store or online. There may or may not be a repress sometime down the road. If it gets to the point where your only option is the secondary market, you’ll need to break the piggy bank.
• Used records – The vinyl resurgence also changed what used to be an inexpensive and fun way to add LPs to your life, used bin diving. Used records are still out there, but prices have been driven up by collectors. They’re not looking for records they don’t have, necessarily, or can’t get as current reissues. The big push has come from a desire to find “originals.” A scratchy, beat-up 1967 copy of Sgt Pepper’s, for example, has become more desirable for a shockingly large number of people than any of the beautifully reissued, gorgeous-sounding modern versions. So used records overall have gone up in price, although they’re still far less than the cost of a new LP. Shopping used is still a great (and my personal favorite) option, but you’ll be paying $7 to $12 apiece for them, instead of the $3 to $6 from just a few years ago.
• Indie exclusives – Similar to Walmart and Target exclusives, some record labels are at least paying lip service to supporting independent record stores by offering a vinyl color variation that’s only sold in them. Total nonsense, if you ask me, but another collector surge has resulted from folks feeling like they have to own every color variation of an album, and artists and labels have jumped fully on board. The most controversial (read: insane) example is last year’s McCartney III. Depending on where and when you bought it, and how much you were willing to spend, Sir Paul was offering at least ten different vinyl colors. The list price for the record was around $25, so do the math and you’ll find the motivation.
• First vinyl release – One of the best things about the new vinyl boom. Record companies realized that the CD era saw a lot of popular records released only on the shiny silver format. Now that people want LPs again, they’re busy putting them out on vinyl for the first time. I’ve been able to add some of my most favorite records from the 1990s and 2000s to my collection and, for the most part, they sound better than the original CDs.
• Picture discs – Unless you’re planning to hang it on the wall of your music listening room, or hoping it’ll increase in value over time, there’s no good reason to buy a picture disc. If you give it a spin, you’ll understand in a hurry that they’re for collecting, not playing. To make a picture disc, a thin sheet of plastic with the picture on it has to be pressed on top of the record. Sounds about like you would expect from covering your record with a sheet of plastic. For decorative purposes only.
• Reissues / Remasters – Take a classic oldie and gussy it up with new packaging and improved (hopefully) sound. A huge part of the current market, loved by music buyers, scorned by vinyl collectors who want originals. Sometimes it works beautifully, I love the remastered Ram by the McCartneys and most of what Blue Note and Impulse are doing with their jazz classics. But most of the time, I’m perfectly happy with an older, less expensive used copy.
• Audiophile records – A sizeable market segment in 2021. Classic albums that are meticulously remastered and pressed in small batches on heavier, purer, quieter vinyl to sound as spectacular as possible. Many are pressed at 45rpm instead of the traditional 33 because the grooves are wider and pick up more information from the original studio tapes. Who knew? Not a sales gimmick this time, kids, I have a small number of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab titles that sound breathtaking, with vinyl that’s as quiet as a CD. Decide for yourself if you want to dip your toe into that pool, that great sound comes at a steep price.
• Anniversary editions – Hide your wallet and duck. A ton of significant classic rock and jazz records are reaching milestone anniversaries because we’re getting old. What you’ll typically see is a reissued, remastered, expanded version of the original record with exhaustive studio outtakes and often a previously unreleased period-correct live album added. Necessary? Hardly. It becomes obvious after a listen or two that the outtakes didn’t make the original album for a reason. Very rarely, like the Stones’ Goat’s Head Soup anniversary box, the live album is essential, but usually not. Expensive? Definitely. Not a category I typically shop.
• Record Store Day – What originally started as a pretty cool idea to drive business to struggling indie record stores has become a blatant money grab aimed at the collector market instead of the music fan. So much pressing plant time is wasted on RSD picture discs, multi-colored splatter vinyl, and severely limited, slight variations of albums that are already available, the cool reissues and first-time-on-vinyls have been largely pushed aside in favor of eBay and Discogs fodder. People hang in line outside the store overnight like they’re waiting to buy Taylor Swift concert tickets, in hopes of buying collectables they can turn over for a profit on the secondary market. Selling them to the folks who didn’t, or couldn’t, wait in line overnight, for inflated prices. The industry is eating its young these days, similar to how the comic book industry imploded in the 1990s.
• Record buyer or record collector? - It’s almost impossible to just be the former nowadays. I buy vinyl LPs to unwrap, play, and play again because, to my ears, there’s no better sounding music delivery system available. If your reason for considering a re- or first-time entry into vinyl is the same, you’ll no doubt become an investment collector by default, like I have. Availability of individual records is so limited across the board, many LPs you buy will go up in value not long after you buy them. I’ve seen albums I purchased sell on eBay and Discogs for 3-4 times what I paid within a week. You may care about this, you may not. I don’t, but it does make me wonder if I should have my collection insured, something that never would have crossed my mind back in the day.
I have about 350 vinyl titles, and that’s likely as big as my collection will get. Where I am right now is where I planned to end up when I started to seriously build my collection during the 2020 lockdown. I have enough variety to find the right record for the right moment for many years into the future. There are a lot of reasons not to buy and listen to albums on vinyl in 2021, but for me it’s all about the art, the old-school hands on, the attention required, and the way analog sound satisfies my soul like nothing else. If that’s what you want in your life, too, I hope these ramblings will help you get there. If you have questions, just post them in the comment section and I’ll be happy to answer.
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