You have vinyl bought 20 years ago yet to be played?

And I thought I had a problem.

i've got some classical boxes from world record club that are still sealed.

Aug 10, 2018 19:18:13 GMT 12 Citroen said:

You have vinyl bought 20 years ago yet to be played?

And I thought I had a problem.

The stars have not aligned for those particular records. Their time will come......maybe.

As said, I have been using MS Excel as a 'database' for my record collection.
My interest, is not so much about checking value or such, it's just keeping tabs on things more reliably than memory.
Also, I like to make notes, eg about where I bought & original price, condition, how it sounds & anything special like review comments.

So, the 'Notes' input area is most important. The Discogs template does not appeal so much in that regard for starters.
It's great for info on release data, etc - but I prefer to read it as a database of info, only.

Excel has been OK for 'cataloguing, but I like to sometimes jot notes whilst listening & I'd like to access the sheet in more than one location - eg. my Desktop PC & on my phone in the listening room

So, recently I have started using cloud-based Google Sheets - which allowed me to quickly import my Excel 'Records'database.

A screenshot:

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Discogs notes section is limited to 255 characters, which should be plenty.
But you can always add other fields, such as in the example below I've added fields for
Price paid
Where bought
Rating
Anything else you want to add

You can make these fields free text, or put in any drop down values





and of course Discogs is available on desktop or from your phone.

trying to use discogs on a phone is an even bigger pia !

i've been adding to my discogs when i play vinyl and sometimes cd's, usually special items like dvd-a, sacd.

901 entries now

just another 2000+ to go

Thanks Citroen - useful info for anyone considering Discogs.
Me, I have invested enough time on 'cataloguing' & have some familiarity from working with spreadsheets over the years.
I like Discogs as a collective database, however.

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Another great feature on Discogs is the Vinyl Hub which allows you to locate the nearest record shop (dependant upon users entering that info of course, just like the record database). Not a lot around this part of the planet:

But I do have one to add from Xi’an

I am really missing records so much, this is one of the few I have seen (in Khiva)

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

My enthusiasm for adding lps to my discogs listings ran out around the beginning of the S section. Trying to drill down for some of the more obscure releases paled fairly quickly.
Since the weather has turned to crap time to have another go and have started on cds instead which is much faster....so far. Think I have about 1800 silver discs but at 50 per day shouldn't take too long.
Interesting already to see just how many recordings by certain artists I have and how many haven't been played in years. Nudged me into revisiting Terry Allen and Dave Alvin so far.

bit of a shock starting to add up various artists stats in my collection as the cds are uploaded. Not long finished the Bonnie Prince Billy catalogue and counting all the various names Will Oldham has used(Palace,Palace Music , BPB etc) I'm somewhere past 60 items and counting. Think I had a bit of an obsession at one time.

Rightly too, as 99.9% of it is worth having

Jul 8, 2020 14:29:16 GMT 12 Citroen said:

Rightly too, as 99.9% of it is worth having

Can't argue with that but gave up on any further new releases from Oldham a couple of years ago. Very prolific, especially if you start chasing all the limited editions and singles. Other artists found greater favour.

As mentioned previously here, I did spend most of Easter (and a few days besides) loading our vinyl collection into Discogs during the Level 4 lockdown.

Once you get going, you can work out a few shortcuts and the “quickest” unique identifier... sometimes it’s a barcode, sometimes it’s the catalogue number. Hardly ever needed to type in the actual artist & title.

Most amusing finds were, aside from some of pithy dead-wax prose, posters / stickers / other media inside the sleeves of albums that I’d never seen before... but went looking for them because they were called out as being part of a particular release.

Haven’t even considered cataloguing our CDs...

I still need to get around to specifying them as part of our house contents insurance policy. Have others here done that?

Yep, evidence to support a potential insurance claim was a partial motivation for my weeks of loading it all in. I haven't specified the vinyl and CDs in the policy but discovering that Discogs values it at 6 figures suggests it would be beneficial to have some basis for a big number if ever a claim is needed.

Bonuses were discovery of all the LPs I had forgotten I had and the occasional surprise at the value of some old stuff. The painful bit is having the do the heavy lifting for the copies of recordings that aren't in the database yet.

Jul 9, 2020 12:30:18 GMT 12 raveydave said:

I still need to get around to specifying them as part of our house contents insurance policy. Have others here done that?

Please let me know if you find an insurer (in NZ) that will insure your records for replacement value.

I've struggled to get any to do so. They will only insure for "depreciated" value, so for instance, my 2014 Beatles Mono Box will be depreciated to next a fraction of its real value in a few years time.

I've sent them photos and Discogs databases but that just seems to scare them off. Haven't even had one say they will insure but a some ludicrous price. Just flat normal depreciated values

Ok, that’s not surprising that general insurers don’t cater for specialty collections.
I doubt there’s enough data points for their actuaries to estimate the risk profile.

Anyone use a specialist broker for hifi insurance?
Some of us have a fair bit of value tied up in classic gear, that doesn’t depreciate much. 😉

Which insurer offers specialist hifi insurance?

You can insure anything, if you’re willing to pay the premium.
The UK have Hiscox, and I think there are a couple of other specialist insurers for stuff like this.
I would expect a local broker could arrange a policy to suit, but haven’t used one since I had an “old car”.

I guess it just comes down to how much risk are you willing to bear yourself, and what price you put on the difference.

I thought that would be the case too.

But all the insurers here just weren't even interested in "naming a price"!

Just about through the B section and already discovered quite a few cds and even artists that have fallen out of favour.
Interesting to find little collections where there was obviously a bit of passion for the music at one time, now cooled.
Case number one for me is Jeff Buckley, a reasonable selection of both lps and cds but can't remember when I last played any.
Three vinyl copies of Grace and a bit stunned to see the pricing on the ORG 45rpm double lp. A whole lot more than I paid.
As for the question of insurance, I chased up our insurance company a few times several years ago to be told they didn't classify records as collectables unlike stamps or coins so it was just covered under personal affects. Since my music room is some distance from the house I'd be very unlikely to loose both in a fire so fingers crossed we have enough to cover one or the other.
I could see some interesting conversations re value. I could pick out some box sets that are now around the four figure mark on current sales. Now if these are in mint, maybe played once, condition it's going to be a fight if there's any attempt to seriously write down the value.

It depends on the nature of the loss/claim too I think.
If you have a house fire/flood/earthquake, etc. then the total value of all your contents would be key, not the specific value of one item, say a music collection.

For burglary however, you may wish to specify the value of your collection (most policies require you to 'specify' only jewellery, artworks or such items over a specific value, eg $1k-$3k). Most 'non'premium' policies offer 'market value' for most household belongings & will get in an expert to assess loss/damage of specialist items.

Insurance is a personal thing - as mentioned above, you need to decide on the likely risk of loss or damage. And the likelihood of the risk/loss of such an event & thus the amount of loss that you would be willing to accept. IMO, seldom is it sensible to pay for an insurance contract for 100% 'current replacement value'.

IMHO.

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It may not be sensible to pay for replacement value. BUT in my mind that is what insurance is for.
I'm insuring it for loss/damage and if that happens I want it repaired or replaced.

At worst the IRD has LPs having a 2 year life, 100% DV/SL rate.

Insurance values at best a 25% depreciated value, so my Mono Beatles Box now has an insured value of about $70 but a replacement value of over $1000 (if you can even find one for sale!).

Spending about an hour each day with the cd listings and 6 shelves of about 30 now done (1673 lps and cds so far). Not as fast as I'd hoped with some artists even using bar codes.
Many times its down to reading codes from the cd hub which isn't great for the eye sight.
I've been trying to be as accurate as possible but there are quite a few Aus made discs that don't appear in which case I just select the closest pressing and add that one.
In the end the list is not something I'm going to use to sell from but as a general reminder of the collection and a rough guide to values etc. Since most cds are less than $10 it's not worth the effort in adding a Discogs entry.

Milestone of sorts passed today with over 2000 items now listed(2037)
Still to finish one of the two large cds racks but I've managed about 900 out of rack #1 so far.

woo hooooo
i've been slack, started with enthusiasm that quickly petered out.
now only adding items when i listen to them.
1329

I'm pretty much only adding ones with barcodes and haven't tried adding any cds apart from a few boxsets
2170

if scanning barcodes how do you know you have the right version ?

afaik record barcodes are not unique.

Correct. The ap gives you the options, with a basic description which is usually enough to select the right version. Occasionally have to look at the deadwax info.

most of my records don't have barcodes so manual search for me

Most of my cds I'm using information in the disc hub to at least get close. Barcodes alone are usually only a start. There's a lack of information on Discogs for many of the Aus/nz made or marketed cds, many through the Shock label.
In those cases I just choose the best match as it's not worth the effort for a cd worth a couple of dollars.