The cost of collecting crisis

Do the rising prices of records, CDs and memorabilia threaten cutbacks by collectors? Joe Geesin reads the runes

- Joe Geesin

In RC 542 News in March, we reported on the ongoing cost of living crisis and its impact on record fairs, especially their organisers and vendors. They face, respectively, the prospect of having to increase their entry fees to fairs, and asking higher prices for the wares that they’re offering. The government’s Office Of Budget Responsibility also reported in March that the UK is 4 per cent poorer as a country due to Brexit, while the labour shortages that it’s caused have had a knock-on effect on inflation. It’s already been fuelled by the Ukraine war’s detrimental impact on energy and food prices, exacerbated by shortages caused by climate change, not to mention renewed banking system instability. All this has impacted on collectors, while record fairs can be regarded as a litmus test for the state of the collecting market, as they are an integral part of its lifeblood. With venues’ staff wages rising, alongside lighting and heating costs, fair organisers are confronted with the conundrum of whether they increase the table and entry prices (or introduce same), or risk putting sellers and buyers off attending them.

Some record fair organisers that we’ve spoken to are re-considering the venues in which they stage their fairs, due to increasing costs for parking, public transport to them, and on-site refreshments, while considering free entry to try to encourage footfall. Equally, record dealers who have stalls at fairs and also have spiralling costs have to ponder whether they should increase the asking prices of stock to recuperate this, or counterintuitively, to