![]() “I could advise people of the sort of records you should be buying now that are likely to go up in value,” he says.ġ Look for limited editions of new releases like the records specially pressed for Record Store Day. As growth rates vary across genres and eras, prey to the unpredictable whim of fashion, investment opportunities still exist. “Ten years ago you could have invested in a record portfolio, so to speak, which will probably have tripled in value since then,” Mr Burgess says. There is still time to get back in the proverbial groove. Meanwhile, those who got rid of their collections under the disastrous pretext of decluttering deserve sympathy. We have played the long game with consummate skill, or perhaps luck. Those of us who kept buying vinyl amid the various existential threats it faced can congratulate ourselves on holding our nerve amid testing market conditions. His words trigger a pleasurable frisson of smugness. “There will be very few which are actively going down.” “Your records are likely to be gaining in value pretty much across the board,” Mr Burgess says. Video: Listen: Valuable vinyl in the attic, the perils of investment cliches and the gambling habits of millennials The boom has raised the value of used vinyl too. More than 4m vinyl albums were sold in the UK last year, the highest level since 1991. People have grown nostalgic for the aesthetic, tactile pleasures of records, the look of the sleeve, the feel of the disc. Vinyl’s resurgence is an unexpected side-effect of the trend that at one point seemed set to kill it off - music’s transition into a digital world of streaming and MP3s. Mr Burgess had to sell his north London home in 2006 to keep his business afloat. Three-quarters closed in the UK in the 2000s. Record Store Day, which takes place this weekend, was set up to protect independent record retailers from extinction. Its current state of health comes after a deep trough in the 2000s. He characterises the second-hand record market as “very buoyant”. Mr Burgess set up the Islington shop in 1997 and now has two other London outlets. For the next step I have gone to Flashback Records for expert verification. The result is then matched to records sold on the site. It is a laborious but addictively geeky process by which you use a record’s catalogue number and the etchings in its run-off groove to work out when it was pressed. Discogs, an online resource for selling recorded music, has a tool enabling one to estimate the value of one’s collection. Ludovic Hunter-Tilney and his music collection at his home in west London © Anna Gordon/FT But it also represents thousands of pounds worth of expense. The total includes the large quantity of free music that I am sent as the FT’s pop critic. ![]() My music collection comprises almost 500 vinyl records, several thousand CDs and more than 12,000 digital songs. My visit is to calculate the value of an asset that has taken me more than 30 years to build up. “What else do you do with a maths degree from Cambridge?” he says. Mr Burgess, 52, has the long hair of the rock star he failed to become. Record sleeves line the walls.Ī portrait of Phil Collins has been doctored to give him vampire’s teeth. ![]() ![]() A stereo system plays dub reggae and vintage soul. Browsers riffle through rows of second-hand vinyl and CDs. I am in Mr Burgess’s shop, Flashback Records, in Islington, north London. My record’s estimated value promptly plummets to about £70. There’s a gouge there,” says the vinyl connoisseur, inspecting a deep scratch on side two of the indie-rock classic. ![]() Mint copies these days sell for as much as £300. That’s massive,” says Mark Burgess as I produce a prize specimen from my record collection - a vinyl original of My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 album Loveless. ![]()
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