Melissa, that's an long established reality. The entire catalog of
mainstream classical LPs have been on the second-hand market for 20 years,
and haven't sold. It's tragic, but the typical RCA, Columbia, Angel,
Philips, DG records are commercially worthless. Budget labels even more so.
I have a couple hundred albums culled out for disposal, and I think the
trash is what's going happen to them. I hate to burden Goodwill with them.
Rochester is stuffed full!

Randy, YES. A microcosm. A canary in a coal mine.

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Melissa Widzinski
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 8:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Classical LP Price Guide?

I agree with Randy. I just took 4 large crates of classical LPs to the
Record Archive shop in Rochester, NY (some of you might remember from the
conference) and out of it all, they only accepted 5 LPs. What they accepted
was all more experimental in content. They had zero interest in anything
pre-1900, so I took the rest to Volunteers of America to donate.
-Melissa

On Aug 11, 2012, at 7:52 PM, "Randy A. Riddle" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> I have to wonder if the market for classical cds, particularly used
> cds, has gone downhill a bit because of layoffs and cutbacks in higher
> ed the past few years. I have one friend, a musician, that's typical
> - he was laid off and pretty much had to sell a big swath of his
> classical cd collection to get by. At first, he could sell them at
> used cd/record stores; now they're glutted and don't take them unless
> they're unusual.
>
> A significant component of the market for classical works is
> associated with higher ed and arts organizations.
>
> On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 7:41 PM, Karl Miller <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>> As far as I know the only comprehensive price guide for Classical
recordings was
>> the one prepared and published by David Canfield. It dates from 2000 and,
based
>> upon my own experience, things have changed since then. Since I retired,
my wife
>> and I sell recordings (CDs and LPs) which are donated to our record
company and
>> use the profit to fund releases. The Canfield Guide lists Lyrita records
at
>> prices ranging from about $8-49. We just advertised a group of about 25
Lyrita
>> discs (near mint condition) and sold but a few of them at around $7.
each. More
>> than half--no bids. I have found that some of the higher priced items
still
>> command a "higher" price, but in general, I have watched price fall
>> significantly.
>>