MRR #266 Record Collecting
This is part two of a discussion of punk record collecting the 21st century. Last column I talked about some basic principles, like value, rarity, price, and merit. This time around I’d like to talk about how the internet has affected record collecting.

Pundits like to say that the spread of information technology has changed everything. In many areas I think the affects of the internet are overstated. But for record collecting the whole picture has changed in the last decade or so.

I feel that the primary affect the internet has had on record collecting is the diffusion of knowledge. You can learn as much about hardcore on Kill From the Heart in one afternoon as I have from 20 years of reading MRR and Flipside. There are dozens of websites featuring discographies and information about rare and obscure records. You can download millions of MP3s from a variety of sources. All this was until recently the province of a small elite group of collectors. Most “average” collectors knew only of the rare and obscure from bootlegs, re issues, dub tapes and word of mouth. Today it’s possible to see someone wearing a shirt of a band or hear them mentioned and in a few hours have read their bio, downloaded their discography, and checked and rechecked pressing info about their releases.

In the last column I talked about the relative ideas of merit and value in record collecting. The diffusion of knowledge on the internet means that records of merit no longer stay obscure until they are compiled or re issued. There is a wealth of information about almost every punk record ever pressed available at ones fingertips now. This means that the dedicated collector who once had the chance of re discovering great records that the contemporary generation was placing no value on are almost over. There is still a chance that a few undiscovered mega rare punk gems exist, but this possibility dwindles all the time. It has become more and more rare to find great records in dollar bins that store owners don’t recognize the value of.

The next most important change is the creation of the virtual marketplace for punk records. Most of us grew up with ordering records from set sale lists, MRR classifieds and in stores. A very rare record might sit in an out of the way store for years until a buyer came along who was looking for it. Today a store can put a rare record online and make it available to collectors world wide in an instant. There were auctions in pre internet days, some are now legendary, such at the BCT auctions, these dragged on for months of mail and phone bidding. It’s funny how antiquated this seems now although it was only a few years ago. Still, access to this marketplace was limited to a die hard group of collectors. MRR certainly helped promote record collecting as part of its mission from day one. From the cover story in issue 15, to the now classic scumpit articles, to the now barely used classified sections. I have fond memories of Tim’s want list ads “APESHIT ABOUT RECORDS” with lists of impossibly obscure records that no one but he and Kugelberg knew about in those days. The rise of online record selling and trading has made this once essential clearinghouse for punk collecting only a fond memory.

The rise of the online marketplace and diffusion of knowledge has made collecting punk records more popular than ever. There are many thousands more people today who fans of say, Negative Approach and want to buy their 7” than ever bought the 7” or saw the band during their heyday. The internet has knocked down a lot of the barriers to building a sick record collection. There is now a previously undreamed of access to records and information. However, at the same time, the internet has erected another set of barriers to aspiring collectors in the form of price inflation.

Price inflation is one of the most discussed aspects of collecting punk records in the past few years and I want to discuss it from several angles. First off, anyone will tell you this is a supply and demand issue. Many more people are competing for a limited supply of rare records than ever before. They aren’t making these records any more, yet the fan base and number of collectors continues to grow. At one point in the 90’s it seemed like the price of a lot of rare records had sort of leveled off. Then after about 2000 prices started to rocket upwards. The rise of online auction sites made it easier to buy and sell records than ever and it seems like in the last 5 years most prices have always gone up and never down. At the same time you hear a lot of collectors complaining about how there are fewer and fewer “scores” to be had. The few independent record stores that have survived into the 21st Century are quite savvy and are skimming their rare records to sell online instead of unwittingly pricing them at 4$. Old scenesters are less and less likely to sell a collection to a store or to an interested collector for cheap when they can sell them online for top dollar. As time goes by, these traditional sources of records will continue to dry up and most rare records will only be in the hands of collectors. As I mentioned in the last column this puts a lot of upwards pressure on prices as no one is willing to let a record go for less than they paid for it.

Another factor that has really driven prices upwards is the what I would like to call the “holy grail” factor. Most collectors have a holy grail record that has eluded them for many years at any price. For me it’s currently Rattus Khomeni Rock 7”. When a collectors holy grail record comes up for auction they are willing to pay WHATEVER IT TAKES to get the record. When the same record is the holy grail of two or more collectors the competition heats up and price soars. Because one person paid the maximum price for a record once, doesn’t automatically mean every other copy will sell for that price. But it only takes one person paying the higher price to make other people start to assign a higher value to that record. Collectors start to fetishize these records and in a sort of self-fulfilling process they start to rise in price. A lot of obscure records would never attract someone’s attention who didn’t know the band if they were all priced at 3$. But when a record starts selling for several hundred bucks, people start to take notice. And this added interest ironically means the increased demand drives up the price.

Another related factor is that a lot of records turn up only once every few years. If there are ten collectors whose top want only comes up for sale every 2 or 3 years this is automatically going to drive up the price. Often at work in the mind of the buyer is something like “last time I saw this record for sale it cost half as much, next time I see it for sale it might be twice as much again” I think this is driving up a lot of high end items with collectors of late. Prices are continually going up, and a lot of people are afraid if they don’t buy a record now, no matter how high the price, they’ll either never see if for sale again, or it will be three times as much later. I know I have recently bought a lot of records I thought I would find for cheap eventually at far more than I wanted to pay. Primarily because I was afraid the next time I saw them offered the price would have doubled again. Records I passed on when they were priced at 15 or 20$ are now selling for 75-100$, and it’s probable that in the not too distant future they will be selling for 200-300$.

One point I must bring up is that the fan base for hardcore is no longer just people in their teens and twenties. After 20 years of hardcore and close to 30 of punk rock there are many collectors now in their 30s, 40s and even 50s. These people’s incomes have risen and the relative price they are willing to pay for a record is much higher than that a younger crowd might pay. That is to say, if you had bought all the Dischord and Touch and Go singles in the 80’s for less than 10$ each, you wouldn’t mind as much paying 200$ now to get the last holy grail to complete your collection. A lot of people’s tastes increase with their incomes and for record collectors I think it’s more common than not.

A lot of collectors have observed with dismay the fact that a lot of 80’s hardcore records that no one cared about for years have sold recently at high collector prices. Ken Sanderson made the observation that a lot of collectors passed on those second and third tier records when they were new. Now looking back they wonder if they missed some rare gem. So the price of third rate records that were dollar bin staples for many years suddenly rises. The collectors buying these will probably soon realise there was a reason they passed on these records back in the day and they will not hold their value. As I said before, some records have merit, and some don’t. There are currently a lot of records being sold at high prices that aren’t very good, or even very rare. However, the classics will stay the classics and I predict that the prices of these will continue to rise.

A good example of this is the Tales of Terror LP. I saw this band once and they were pretty terrible. Their LP was a common sight in the 3-5$ range and never seemed to move fast from any record bin it resided in. Then in the last year or two several copies sold at auction for 50-70$. The remaining 3-5$ copies are being snagged up and put online as we speak. Maybe a few more will sell for these kind of prices, but when people realise this record pretty much sucks, the price will level off or fall. In contrast, Minor Threat’s Filler ep is not only highly influential but is an insanely hot, paint peeling, fist pumping rager. This record will never go out of style and it’s price will continue to rise as long as people still collect records.

Indeed, a good place to look to see the future of punk/hc record collecting would be the 60’s psych/garage collector scene. Or looking even further into the future the 78 RPM blues/r&b collector scene. These should give an idea of what punk collecting will be like in 20 and 40 years. If current trends continue by the middle of the 21st century a record like Fix-Vengeance or Absentees 7” will sell for five figures.

Quite frequently I hear people saying that prices will come down eventually and that they are currently on a “bubble”. While this may be true of a few items, I think over all prices will continue to rise. For every record that sells at 200$ there’s 50 collectors watching the auction saying “I would totally have bought that for 50$” and those collectors are probably more likely to eventually pay 200$ than they are to wait around for the record to drop in price.

However, so far in my experience, the records sold in online auctions are almost always priced way above actual “market” prices. Usually these represent collectors paying their “holy grail” price as opposed to what the record would sell for if the marketplace was more balanced. The internet auctions drive up the prices over all. But in my experience online auctions are the worst place to buy rare records. But another thing to think about is that a whole generation has grown up who think that online auctions are the ONLY place to find rare records, or any records for that matter. And as this generation ages I think they will contribute the rise in prices.

A somewhat less tangible effect of the internet on record collecting is what culture studies types call the Acceleration of Culture. In a previous column I discussed how the new release window had shrunk from 4-6 months to 4-6 weeks over the past few years. Also, the culture industry seems to manufacture, pump up and kill trends faster than ever. It seems like all the time a new style is being “revived” or becoming “retro chic” while another becomes passé. Trends rise and fall faster in the information age and short attention spans are quickly diverted or transfixed on the next big thing.

There is a never ending process in music wherein a brash new style breaks out and gets a lot of attention, the style blows up and becomes quite popular, many imitators jump on the bandwagon to ape the founders of the style, the style becomes decadent and there is a backlash against it. Then years later a new generation looking to break away from the current music scene rediscovers the most essential elements of the old style, assimilates them into a new style, and revives the style. Interestingly, I think this process is manifested most strongly in punk and hardcore. This is one factor responsible for the massive splintering into sub genres from “Punk” over the years.

Here’s a good example. In the late 80’s, early 80’s hardcore was pretty out of style. Except for Vorhees and a few Youth Crew bands almost no one was rocking 82 style hardcore. The big thing at the time was Sub Pop. I was at the used record store every day flipping through the new arrivals as early 80’s scenesters sold off their vinyl to either buy CDS or new Sub Pop titles. This was one of the best eras for collecting without a doubt. I remember so many older punks looking at me and saying “you still listen to this stuff?”. Foreign hardcore was especially undervalued in this time period and anyone my age can tell you about loading up on todays highly collectible Italian and Scandinavian hardcore records at 50 cents or a dollar each after distributors like Systematic, Greenworld and Rough Trade dumped their foreign hardcore stock. Now fifteen years later early 80’s hardcore is more popular than ever and the sub pop thing is pretty much forgotten. There are a handful of Sub Pop records that are have stood the test of time and still command respect from collectors. But most of them have fallen into the obscurity of dollar bins and garbage dumps. However, for all we know a revival of the Sub Pop sound is right around the corner and prices will soar again as the supply of records from that scene has dried up in the intervening period when no one cared about them.

Most record collectors are first and foremost music fans. They appreciate raging records in any genre. The savvy collector and fan picks the best records from each musical scene as it rises and falls. As I mentioned before, and essential trait for building a sick collection is to look where everyone else isn’t. When everyone is bidding up the price of Japanese hardcore records it’s the best time to start collecting South American punk or digging into Siberian Folk music. That is to say, learn to hear the merit in records that are currently undervalued by other collectors. Follow music and your passion, not what people are paying for records. Price doesn’t always reflect merit and in an era where trends rise and fall fast, many auction winners are going to find themselves stuck with one sided live albums limited to 2000 on fluorescent green vinyl that no one is interested in a few years from now.

And for all of those who say stuff like “no one will care about hardcore records in 30 years” I say BULLSHIT. Hardcore rules. People were probably saying that about Blues in the 30’s or surf music in the early 60’s but there is still a small but dedicated scene for those and many other types of music and the records produced by those styles have generated die-hard collector scenes. If YOU don’t think you’ll be listening to hardcore in 30 years-I pay cash for collections and can be reached at felix@havocrex.com when you are ready to sell, later dude.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1984

Previous | All articles in this category | Next