Over the years, I have collected music, mainly in the vinyl format since childhood. I now amass a fairly large amount of LPs, 45’s, and to a much lesser extent CDs and cassette tapes. My music collection is very important to me and it’s constantly expanding because I continue to make purchases. I have documented my cost incurred as a consumer of music and insured these records over the past couple decades using a table I created in a word document. It basically lists the artist, title of the album, number of albums in the set, number of songs on the album, the year it was copyrighted, the price I paid and where I got it from. To figure out the amount of money I’ve spent to date on my collection, all I would do is select the price column and have the computer sum all the numbers in that column. This can be done easily by right clicking and selecting sum or choosing the sum option in the table properties tab.
This article attempts to answer the following questions for music collectors: How important is your music collection to you? How long have you collected music, and what do you think your collection is worth? Do you have it insured? Do you have any idea what’s it worth or how to assess the value?
Over the years, I have collected music, mainly in the vinyl format since childhood. I now amass a fairly large amount of LPs, 45’s, and to a much lesser extent CDs and cassette tapes. My music collection is very important to me and it’s constantly expanding because I continue to make purchases. I have documented my cost incurred as a consumer of music and insured these records over the past couple decades using a table I created in a word document. It basically lists the artist, title of the album, number of albums in the set, number of songs on the album, the year it was copyrighted, the price I paid and where I got it from. To figure out the amount of money I’ve spent to date on my collection, all I would do is select the price column and have the computer sum all the numbers in that column. This can be done easily by right clicking and selecting sum or choosing the sum option in the table properties tab.
I presume that a lot of music collectors really don’t consider themselves collectors, and I’m pretty sure, even fewer actually look to see what their collections are actually worth and/or seek to insure them. After all, this would take significant amount of time. Also, you’d have to make a table or some sort of spreadsheet to document the cost of the collection, take photos of it to send to an insurance company to prove that you indeed have a collection that warrants insuring, make sure you have some sort of receipts or bank records that show where and how much money you’ve spent on acquiring your music collection etc. etc. etc.
Some may ask, why even insure it, it’s just music, I can always buy or download another copy of it? This isn’t always true. Some pieces in your collection will either be irreplaceable as they are not being pressed anymore, or the cost of buying a replacement copy far exceeds the original price you paid when you bought it. Speaking from experience, I have been the victim of two minor floods. Both floods slightly damaged a few of the outer sleeves in my vinyl collection, amongst other things. I however, try to make sure my collection is insured in case any unforeseen thing happens to it. There are collectors of all types of things that definitely insure their collections. Graphic arts, coins, antiques of all kinds, automotive pieces, books, movies, sculptures, stamps, and guns are a few of the things people commonly collect and insure. It’s quite alarming that music collections are not in this category and some insurance companies don’t have a distinct category to insure music collections. I guess with the download age, we’ve begun to view music as something of a lesser value. However, while recently trying to curb my collection by selling duplicate copies of albums and/or unwanted pieces, I recently found a site online that is much more interactive than my table format I created in the word document. To add, this site provides pictures and value summaries that can be exported to pdf files or shared on other social network sites with other collectors.
The site is free to register, list items for sale, and it’s called discogs. Some of you may know this site which is famous for selling music. The value of a particular piece in your collection, regardless of what you paid for it, is based on the current retail values for the same titles/versions over the past 10 most current sales on their site. So this database is very current/consistently up to date. This is very useful in those instances where you’ve obtained a rare and valuable piece of music for a cheap price or vice versa. For example, you may have spent $1.00 for an album worth $20.00. On the other hand, you may have spent $20.00 for an album worth $5.00.
https://www.discogs.com/help/doc/collection-and-wantlist-notes
Click the above link to see how to add items to your music collection.
Another thing I have commonly overlooked when assessing the amount of money I spent on my collection was sales tax. I did not account for the sales tax I spent on an album, and would only list the price of the album. This would be pretty much a non-factor if I had a very small number of albums. However, even with 100 albums that one may have spent $1.00 for each, the tax alone can be worth $10 or 10% of the listed price. The point is, be sure to include the tax when figuring out how much you’ve spent on your music collection. By watching the tutorial video, you can see that it’s quite easy to add to your collection and even include the condition of each particular piece. You can add folders based on genre or whatever categories you choose and it’s just an overall better way to catalog your music. I suggest that serious collectors and the occasional music consumer use this site for the value assessment of their collections. With the constant downsizing and increases in your music collection, it can be a very useful tool to keep up with the value of your albums in case anything should happen to them. I strongly suggest that all collectors use this site in some form or fashion to keep up with their collections. PEACE!
This article was wrotten by Ahmored Tieghur on 01/31/2016 for The Wandering Eyes Blog.
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