I think we do and we don’t if I’m honest. I’m sure we’ve all had clear outs where we’ve made calculations about resale value vs the pleasure to be had from a record.
When I buy a bottle of wine or some cheese I’m almost certain it will all be consumed and enjoyed and there will be nothing left of it afterwards that can be sold. But with vinyl there is always the potential to sell it on.
Generally tho there is more pleasure to be had devaluing a record whilst playing it, than keeping it pristine to sell it, for me.
speaking personally i gotta say i never once bought records as an investment. or thought of them like that. though i may have joked occasionally to that effect. and i've obsessively guarded and protected them (never lent one ever) not because of their value but their sanctity.
and i've never considered the [resale value] vs [pleasure to be had] equation. i've always proceeded on the assumption that i wouldn't be able to make a profit from their sale. so i suppose that's a mixture of naivety and cold calculation.
for me the criteria for keeping/losing them has always been whether or not they offend me (how ugly or beautiful they are in conception) or whether they BELONG in the collection (it all hangs together like a big matrix).
and going through the process of cataloguing them absolutely confirms this. because its organisational principle flies totally in the face of economic sense - in some cases from a negative financial point of view (why do i need so many country rock lps - or every single van der graf generator lp - or, the nadir, twelve inch hip-hop club bangers from the 00s) and some from a financially positive one (what possessed me, beyond mania to buy
so many early grime twelves - or neue deutsche welle - or music concrete lps).
i know
@john eden you're not saying exclusively one way or t'other.
if i'd sat down thirty years ago and considered that i'd wanted to make an investment out of it i can tell anyone what i would have done. i would have bought first edition mint "classic" lps and filed them away without listening to them.
BUT ACTUALLY time and again i'm seeing that would have been a bad financial decision over going with passion - because the oddest things have become valuable - for instance aaliyah's "one in a million" lp - no way was i expecting that to be so valuable - or the discarded hardcore twelve inches that i hoovered up from 1994 onwards (when i first met
@blissblogger in fact) who in their right mind would have considered that to be valuable cultural capital?