Some good points here.
I think the northern scene has always had it's share of people who are only interested in 'rarities'. Maybe this a by product of wanting to DJ and have the most 'elite' sounds? Since we mentioned him recently, I seem to remember discussing the finer points of Candi Staton's career once at Leeds with Steve Chadwick. It was a one way conversation that lasted all of 15 seconds because at the time apart from "Upper hand" he didn't know anything else she'd made. So we moved onto Bobby Womack, Bettye Swann etc. same reaction etc.
I have been a label collector slightly ha ha, did loads of em, Veep, Loma, Minit, Toddling Town, SS7, Wand, Arctic, revilot etc. but those types of labels do have a high percentage of good records on them, and fewer turkeys. I've just been going through my Chess collection for a radio show, blimee some great stuff I'd forgotten about. Dunno whether half of them are £5 or £100 records, but that doesn't matter at the end of the day. What maters is 'cor this sounds good'
So yeah collector first, and that's borne out by the fact that I have just discovered that I am inadvertently upgrading some of my single sided demos to issues with B sides
Chalky is quite right when he says the vast majority of good records are within the budget of most collectors.