Great topic John, really hard to pin it down to exact reasons, its subjective really and there will be many opinions on this, for what its worth I reckon its only the so called big stuff that holds its value these days. Some records will have a "demand" shelf life and fetch inflated prices, once the shelf life is up the price plummets, you know the scenario, "so and so is playing it" so for a while up goes the price, pathetic really, but, thats the game we are in. It saddens me to see genuine fantastic soul records going for 99p, and then you see some average at best stuff going for big money because of the exposure certain DJ's bestow on them (not their fault by the way) great news though for the soul collector who can pick great stuff up for the price of a pint. Even rarer collectors records or records on the periphery (limited exposure) are not holding their value, got my opinion, there isn,t enough demand for the cheaper (all be it some great) records, the volume of genuine collectors isn't there any more and the cash is going towards the higher end "trophy" stuff, not enough "thinking mans record" collectors anymore. I'll get my coat
Kev