Is Your Collection Your Pension?

[TOAD]

That's the spirit lad. Save 'em for the archive @ the Northern Soul museum where they'll be treated with love and will give pleasure to countless future generations. That way you can float to heaven knowing that your collection was kept intact and the music will be kept alive for future generations. We'll even put a nice little plaque celebrating the good work Stevie G did for Northern Soul in his lifetime.

By the way did I mention that I'm training to be a curator?

Ian D

ok mr d your left my terrabyte harddrive with my mp3s on enjoy

ps all ovo

[boba]

First thing tomorrow, I'm going to contact the curators at each of the big London Museums and tell them that they ought to take photos of all those musty Mummies, Mammoths Teeth and Viking relics and stick the lot in a skip since they are only of value to another collector.

I'll be expecting the men in the pale green ambulance with giant butterfly nets around tea-time

comparing a collection of 50,000 45s to a collection of several mummies is silly. The mummies themselves are interesting to see and physically of historical importance. the records are important in that they had interesting music and labels that revealed local history. their value is not in their physical existence. maybe even seeing examples of a few of them would be interesting. 50,000 of them together on shelves is not interesting to anyone except obsessive losers like me.

[Ian Dewhirst]

independent of the subject of this thread (which I've expressed my opinion on previously -- again, you just need to look to what happened to doowop), in the digital age what is the value in preserving a collection intact? You can digitize every record and scan each one and make them publicly available. If you did that with your collection, what would the value be in the fact that all the physical records are together? It's only of value to another collector / vinyl fetishist, what would having a trust to keep them preserved in a dusty room somewhere accomplish? It doesn't have social value anymore at that point.

Yep, totally agree Boba.

But I still can't understand why my digitized scan of the Mona Lisa failed to draw any kind of crowd at my viewing at the Carshalton tea rooms.......

Ian D

[Ian Dewhirst]

comparing a collection of 50,000 45s to a collection of several mummies is silly. The mummies themselves are interesting to see and physically of historical importance. the records are important in that they had interesting music and labels that revealed local history. their value is not in their physical existence. maybe even seeing examples of a few of them would be interesting. 50,000 of them together on shelves is not interesting to anyone except obsessive losers like me.

But Britain is full of obsessive losers like you Boba! This country was built on the romantic notion that being an obsessive loser is a noble art. That's why we're the kings of preserving other people's cultures......

Time to get busy and get some public funding from a Northern town which needs regenerating methinks!

Ian D

[Guest moggy]

Putting all the nostalgia and how long and hard it has been to amass these collections and at what cost

In lets say the next 30 years, the bulk of us will either be Brown bread or struggling to go to the toilet on our own (cruel but true)

This in turn will see the dissapearance of virtualy every soul night/ nighter etc as there just wont be enough youthful people around to make it work, lets face it most tunes bought these days are by the 40+ brigade as they have got over the kids' & mortgage scenario, who is going to replace that market !

Rare Soul " & I mean the very rare will always have some market, but for the hundreds & hundreds of £50-£150 currently out there, they wont be worth diddly squat

Imagine in 20 years if say the top 50 collections in the UK came on the market, do you honestly believe they would sell the bulk of the collections ,maybe today they would but not in the future, as sad as it is, we have to face up the fact as great as rock & roll was when it appeared & doo-wop and many other genres of music they do fade away people will always know of it in future but it just doesnt appeal to different generations and eventuly dies out.

Why is it there are thousands of us who came from an era where music was so brilliant and diverse with Disco,Punk,Reggae,soul etc, we chose Northern, and why is there not thousands of youth out there waiting to take our place, if, as we are always stating theres nothing better than a slab of soul music or our music, as much as it hurts me to say this, it just doesn't appeal to younger people in the numbers it did to our generation.

So sell know all of you, lets flood the market with some cheap vinyl

[Ady Pountain]

Picking up on comparing the Soul scene to other music based cultures, which in turn will decide if your collection could be your pension, the Rock&Roll scene is much healthier than I thought. There is a Record Fair in Bristol run by a bunch of Rock&Rollers and they have flyer's for as many weekenders as the Soul scene, a lot of the buyers are in their sixties and from my observation the stall that does the best trade sells DVDs of R&R films, concerts etc, lots of them. The acts at the weekenders are as obscure to me as The Peps would be to them.

Someone once said to me that the reason the Soul scene continues is that Soul music is still being made today. Consequently younger people have an entry point into the music, which could take them to the Northern scene, the Funk scene etc. If we smile and welcome them who knows where it might lead.

I have to agree with the comments about Europe as well. The nights I've been to are all full of energy, because the people are younger, musically open, if it's good I'll dance, if it's not I won't and the enthusiasm reminds me of the UK in the eighties.

It's meant to be fun and still is to me, Cheers, Ady

[Modernsoulsucks]

Picking up on comparing the Soul scene to other music based cultures, which in turn will decide if your collection could be your pension, the Rock&Roll scene is much healthier than I thought. There is a Record Fair in Bristol run by a bunch of Rock&Rollers and they have flyer's for as many weekenders as the Soul scene, a lot of the buyers are in their sixties and from my observation the stall that does the best trade sells DVDs of R&R films, concerts etc, lots of them. The acts at the weekenders are as obscure to me as The Peps would be to them.

Someone once said to me that the reason the Soul scene continues is that Soul music is still being made today. Consequently younger people have an entry point into the music, which could take them to the Northern scene, the Funk scene etc. If we smile and welcome them who knows where it might lead.

I have to agree with the comments about Europe as well. The nights I've been to are all full of energy, because the people are younger, musically open, if it's good I'll dance, if it's not I won't and the enthusiasm reminds me of the UK in the eighties.

It's meant to be fun and still is to me, Cheers, Ady

I go to a rock'n' roll do in Preston now and again. I'd say the age group is probably younger overall than average NS do with quite a lot of people in their 20's and 30's. The attraction appears to be the live group. The dj plays CDs and there are no 45s for sale.

As you know the Beach scene, older overall I'd say, once 45 focused is now pretty much CD orientated and the dj's use laptops.

Neither of those examples appear to revolve around high-priced vinyl or any notion that it's any kind of retirement fund. As you say it's meant to be fun.

ROD

Edited January 27, 2009 by modernsoulsucks

[Steve L]

So sell now all of you, lets flood the market with some cheap vinyl

Hear hear

[Spacehopper]

ive not read all the posts so sorry if i repeat...but this is my two penies worth !.....

firstly none of us can see in the future so none of us can know what will be popular in 30 years time......remember 7"s were suppose to only last a few months or years at most back in the 60s...who would have thought 40 years on some would be selling for 4 figures.....i can remember in the 80s cds were IT .....then it was mini discs......then mp3...then ipods and downloads.....now cds are struggling and no one has an mp3 player...and through all this there is still a market for vinyl.....and not only us....different genres and age groups...hopefully one day people will realise they are being conned by new technology....

i think sometimes we think WE are the soul scene.....this music will still be around long after us,whether in the us ,europe or yet another revival in the uk by kids who may not even be born yet who knows....

credit crunch ?.....they come around every decade or so...things will be good again one day its all a case of timing when you sell.....and even now checkout ebay some people have still got money and are buying tunes for big money !...if you have the tunes (and who knows the big money tunes of the future,it only takes a big name dj to start playing them )...if you sell one a week for a few hudred quid its more than most pensions pay out

so yeah i am relying on my little collection being worth a few quid one day.....not enuff to retire in the caribean...but i trust vinyl more than some shady character in a suit who will make his money and maybe lose mine !!

15 years ago i sold a scooter and shed full of bits for a grand which would be worth five times that ammount now !!!!!....

nobody KNOWS...

[whereismy record]

Ok read some of the threads and very interesting. A few years back I had a run of bad luck and was about to lose house and all I had. The fastest way to raise money was records, looking at them sitting in boxes and never playing them regular, so I sold them and cleared of arrears and debts, but the hardest part was not wanting to go somewhere and hear the records getting played and saying I had that,

I am now on my feet and about to go and work over seas and have started to buy again but I am looking more at when I die hope to be comfortable and any records will go to my youngest daughter who is only 3 just now. Then they will always be there for her to sell if she ever needs money some day.

Ok done a search and found this, ok its books but small printed items all have been re-printed and re-printed but always a collectors item. I think there are certain records ok the rarer ones and also the internet will be the way NS will continue world wide.

In the book world,

the rarest of the rare

Would you pay $25 million for a Bible?

getCSS("3053751") if (pop_tabBoxes) pop_pushTabBox('boxB_3053751'); By Philipp HarperEvery passion has its Holy Grail, and rare-book collecting is no exception.

Ask a group of bibliophiles to identify the rarest of all rare books, and a majority probably would cite the Gutenberg Bible of 1456, the first book ever printed.

Assuming a collector could find a complete first-edition Bible, which had a run of several hundred copies, he could expect to pay anywhere from $25 million to $35 million, says rare-book expert Kenneth Gloss, proprietor of Brattle Book Shop in Boston.

Gloss, a well-known appraiser who has appeared on PBS' "Antiques Roadshow," bases his estimate on the fact that a single volume of the two-volume Gutenberg set sold for $5.5 million about 25 years ago. Today, single pages from first-edition Bibles fetch $25,000 each.

Anyone who can afford to invest in the top end of the antiquarian market generally will do very well. Consider, for example:

• A first edition of the collected works of Shakespeare published in 1623 sold not long ago for more than $6 million, a record price for the Bard's works.
  
• The collection of Leonardo Da Vinci manuscripts that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates paid $30 million for more than 25 years ago now may be worth as much as $100 million, Gloss estimates.
  

[Sunnysoul]

Ya beat me to the punch

Obviously, if times are tough, we may all be forced to sell our assets. Our records are assets - let's face it.

Depending on future desperation and how happy they make us compared to what else we could give up first - will make the decision for us.

I think some are trying to justify the reason they buy vinyl - and most do it simply for enjoyment and/or the vinyl disease.

The topic related to those who purely buy as an investment (ie. their pension). I guess some could dabble by buying vinyl and storing them away for a future sale - but I can't see it occuring purely for that unemotional reason. Buying the odd gold or silver ignot or dabbling on the stock market would make more sense to me.

I'm very emotionally attached to my vinyl and can't seem to ever let things go. (It really bothered me recently, when I finally sold one of my spares to Sam, but he's a good nagger and caught me in a xmas moment.) But at the same time, I must admit that having bought some vinyl over the years gives me greater comfort for my old age than if I'd spent the same on a shoe or dress collection. Nobody knows what's around the corner.

...Good thing is - if I keep going like this, I probably won't live long enough to ever need to make the choice

m

I'm with Maria, particularly on the point about having an emotional attachment to the vinyl, and have never cared about what they may or may not be worth at some point in the future.

Great soul records are pieces of art after all, both the music and the records themselves !

[Guest posstot]

ive not read all the posts so sorry if i repeat...but this is my two penies worth !.....

firstly none of us can see in the future so none of us can know what will be popular in 30 years time......remember 7"s were suppose to only last a few months or years at most back in the 60s...who would have thought 40 years on some would be selling for 4 figures.....i can remember in the 80s cds were IT .....then it was mini discs......then mp3...then ipods and downloads.....now cds are struggling and no one has an mp3 player...and through all this there is still a market for vinyl.....and not only us....different genres and age groups...hopefully one day people will realise they are being conned by new technology....

i think sometimes we think WE are the soul scene.....this music will still be around long after us,whether in the us ,europe or yet another revival in the uk by kids who may not even be born yet who knows....

credit crunch ?.....they come around every decade or so...things will be good again one day its all a case of timing when you sell.....and even now checkout ebay some people have still got money and are buying tunes for big money !...if you have the tunes (and who knows the big money tunes of the future,it only takes a big name dj to start playing them )...if you sell one a week for a few hudred quid its more than most pensions pay out

so yeah i am relying on my little collection being worth a few quid one day.....not enuff to retire in the caribean...but i trust vinyl more than some shady character in a suit who will make his money and maybe lose mine !!

15 years ago i sold a scooter and shed full of bits for a grand which would be worth five times that ammount now !!!!!....

nobody KNOWS...

Just about hits the nail on the head for me....except i swapped my GP150 for a drum kit, about 22 years ago. J reg innocenti spec.....scared to think what that would be worth, in top nick, now.

I remember in the late 80's how people were saying £30 quid, for the pyramid...prices are going mad.....Just how much is that going for now? 10 times that?..at least?

So, maybe they will "TURN OUT" to be a great investment, financially.....yet as a love for the music goes, if you don't have food to eat when your 65 at least you'll starve to death tapping your feet!

[Guest WPaulVanDyk]

Well i think a lot of Northern soul records are bound to go up in price. The rarer they are maybe the more rarer they get or will some low price tunes suddenly go for big prices

but i like the way in which someone said about Rock 'n' Roll. I have been to places that have had a Rock 'n' Roll night on with a live act They are great. there is a scene of it and i know they play CD's but they have a tendancy also to play both old and newer records.

Only thing with Northern soul is they are still producing tracks or songs with a Northern soul sound that will be by some major artist or someone that gets it into the charts and so on. like singles even re-released or someone like Paul Weller, Sharleen spiteri and so on

Rock 'n' Roll is done by a lot of artists on indie labels or thereself and are not really well known but on the Rock 'n' Roll scene and not really singles but albums