Vinyl Bargain or Rip off?

gibbsy

When I was listening to Luxembourg there was nothing else. No rock music at all on main stream radio. No pirate radio that was still to come. We all use to meet in a local café where the owner allowed us to play records in there as his son was one of our friends. Singles cost 5/6d. That would be a staggering £4.25 at todays value, so perhaps £20 for a current vinyl album represents excellent value for what we had to pay back in the day.

If I remember correctly then the first album I ever bought was Beatles For Sale which cost £1/12/6d.

simonblue

I remember my 1st record player,a little one with build in speaker,listening to it in bedsit land,no TV internet,home cinema, etc.
Save me having that,with the few albums,i could afford

Doghouse Riley

In my teens in 1959, most of the jazz albums I bought {which I still have and play) cost nearly £2.

That's nearly £45 in today's money.

gibbsy

All music was expensive, apart from live shows which were gloriously cheap, and took up a big part of my income. There was a little music shop in the town where I worked and on pay day I'd put a couple of bob away until I had enough money saved there to buy an LP. Beer was cheap though, 1/7d for a pint of Ansells Bitter.

Doghouse Riley

At seventeen in 1958, I bought a little pre-war Austin Seven Ruby. I was living in Surrey (it's now South London)  and driving up to work in Knightsbridge  in it every day.
London prices were dearer.
Flowers Keg bitter went up to 2/- a pint and petrol  to 4/- a gallon. The ratio between those two prices stayed the same for decades.

Timmy C

My vinyl buying peak was the mid 80's when we would usually pay around 4.99/5.99 for a UK/Euro release and 7.99/8.99 for US imports. That was for more obscure metal stuff from independent shops but I think mainstream releases from the likes of Iron Maiden for example were still only about 5.99 from the main retailers such as Our Price/HMV etc.  So that's about 15 to 18 quid in today's money if you ignore the US import prices.

I started replacing my vinyl with CD's in 88/89 and they would range from about 9.99 for back catalogue re-rereleases from independent stores to around 14.99 for pretty much anything in stock in a mainstream store. Imports not taken into account as they could be crazy money, That's apparently somewhere between 25 and 40 quid in todays money according to This Moneys inflation calculator so although vinyl is perhaps a little more expensive in real terms compared to my days of buying it, CD prices have tumbled a hell of a lot more.

Derek S-H

Wow, the memories come flooding back reading this Thread!

We didn't have a Hi-Fi, we had a huge teak radiogram with an auto-return record deck (you could stack 7" singles!), a tuner, built-in speakers and a drinks cabinet in the middle!

My sister had a portable cassette player with tuner which I used to "borrow" all the time to listen to Peel. My other sister was given a Sony Walkman as a Crimbo pressie and it was an absolute revelation at the time as I'd never used headphones before, and you could really get lost in your music lying on your bed in the dark.

So yeah, I take it all back regarding da kidz - they've got it made!

Chillie6

We had one of those at home as well.
I had an auto return, stackable record, player in my bed room.  I then had another unit, connected to the record player by a cable, to turn it into stereo.  

Doghouse Riley

Hmm.

In the  sixties when I was in my early twenties, I managed a TV and electrical appliance store for a now defunct chain.

Radiogram with a cocktail cabinet?

This was the best seller. 105 guineas.  Bleupunkt.
Around £2,300 now

They were very popular with the West Indians who lived in bed sits in North London. They'd come over to work on the buses and the tube. They bought them on the drip. But were always polite and good payers.

                                                                               


Long demo video

gibbsy

I vaguely remember having a really crap tape recorder and holding to microphone to the speaker on the transistor radio to try and record the top twenty.