Bleedin' ell Tony....I think I've got to agree with a lot of what you've said there mate
Back in the day most of the people I knew were on about the same wage and built their collections by a bit of wheeling and dealing and deep crate digging. The sort of guy's I knocked around with (you know who they are Cliff, Trev, Tony...) also bought records that were not necessarily big nighter spins and built up collections that way. It always seemed to be a bit more of a level playing field back then some how.