When the broadcaster Danny Baker recently tweeted that, after much consideration, he was going to sell his ‘considerable’ singles collection, I was shocked. What? Singles – those seven-inch slices of wonder that illuminated our teenage years? Surely not. They were the first things we – at 56, I am almost a contemporary of Baker – could afford to buy that we really thought would last for ever. Black vinyl time capsules. I immediately thought of Squeeze and their hits Cool for Cats and Up the Junction. How waiting to see where they’d got to in the chart rundown on a Wednesday morning on Radio 1 would make me late for school. It wasn’t just about Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook’s brilliant lyrics or Jools Holland’s runaway piano pieces, it was the song, the pink and purple vinyl, the bright sleeves, the whole delivery.
For someone so publicly passionate about their record collection as Baker, who posts photos of selections on social media daily, the decision to flog it felt fundamentally wrong. As if he were selling a limb. But there it was, in black and white. ‘I don’t play my 45s any more, barely collect them, and I’m now 64… No point them being ornaments on shelves…’
There was also the follow-up tweet, Baker having realised he could probably buy a villa in the Algarve for the value of eight of them.
I have decided to sell my considerable singles collection. I don't play my 45s any more, barely collect them, and I'm now 64.
Some pretty nice pieces in there obviously but no point them being ornaments on shelves...
I don’t have an exhaustive record collection – it very much remains the product of my teens and 20s; more a collection of memories than simple recordings – but because I love music and, like Baker, worked at the New Musical Express as my first full-time job, I often cross paths with those who are more obsessive about their record collections: musicians, fans, promoters gleefully photographing their visits to second-hand record shops. It’s joyful and excessive. It’s also a world populated almost exclusively by men of a certain age.
A visit to a regular record fair in Spitalfields Market suggests vinyl collectors are the modern equivalent of pre-craft beer Camra archetypes. Black T-shirts, paunches and grey hair abound as they feverishly rifle through stalls of deep-binned vinyl.
Some men see record collecting as a showcase of their emotions, intellect, tastes – their social armour, their creative pedigree. Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity, once said that ‘it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently’. I don’t agree with him, but there is something particular about record collecting that appeals to men – maybe they enjoy organising their collections more than just listening to them.
The pandemic has certainly been the catalyst for an extra bump in activity. A director friend from the world of advertising, who grew up helping out in his father’s record shop, has made enough money trading vinyl to collectors over the past year and a half to not want to alert the taxman by revealing his name. ‘When lockdown happened, all my filming work ground to a halt,’ he tells me. ‘I was looking for something else to fill my time, and started to see lots of people selling record collections online and at auctions. Because people were stuck at home, they started to do all those jobs they’d had on their to-do lists for ages – like clearing out sheds, lofts and storage rooms – and discovered boxes of old records that hadn’t been played or looked at for years. So they sold them off.’
He also, he said, noticed a lot of ’50s and ’60s collections being sold by kids whose parents had passed away. ‘I started selling on eBay, with no idea of the market, and it was amazing. A combination of people sitting at home in front of screens all day, spare money from not going out, and a new-found love of vinyl has meant records have been fetching incredible prices. I’ll turn over £100,000 this year, with a profit of £50,000-£60,000.’ Little wonder, perhaps, that when Baker posted his tweet, 300 people instantly responded with requests for their jukeboxes.
For me, collecting music was a rope ladder that pulled me through my teens and into my 20s; something that gave me excitement, a high, a sense of discovery and belonging. Music was a motivating fuel for what and where I wanted to be in life – down the front at a Ramones or Redskins gig mainly, selling my home-made fanzines.
The vinyl, alongside DJs John Peel, Kid Jensen and Janice Long, was the delivery mechanism. I spent years with my records, lying on my bedroom floor as The Fall, Jam, Specials and Undertones played over and over again, reading the few lines of information on the sleeves, singing along to them, making the lyrics up for bits I couldn’t understand, entering into that three-minute world I lived in and loved. I did multiple newspaper and milk rounds a week so I could go and buy the new single by The Cure or Stiff Little Fingers.
The passion took me to NME as a very young man – I was going on tour with The Cult and Pixies before I could even shave. The first time I went to a publishing award ceremony – to collect an award for simply writing about music! – I had to borrow a shirt with a collar from my girlfriend’s older brother. Like all my colleagues I lived in a T-shirt with a band’s name on the front.
Writing about bands meant we were inundated with tapes and discs from record companies and bands. I was hooked on live music, often going to multiple gigs a night. Gradually, the actual vinyl records ceased to be as important as the music on them. My biggest regret in life is that I haven’t continued to be engaged with music in that way.
But the vinyl hunters like Baker don’t feel like that. They keep going, accumulating. Checking Discogs, eBay, second-hand record shops and fairs. Improving their collections, finding their rare golden grooves, sharing information with each other. Baker regularly takes to Twitter to discuss his late-night eBay buys, or to wade back in time with like-minded vinyl fiends and fellow former music journalists to recapture the moment they bought a specific ’70s rock or disco album. Photographs of the collections of the likes of Bob Stanley of St Etienne, or the author Pete Paphides, look impressive, and indeed endless. Pop stars still buy records. I recently interviewed The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess on Zoom in a recording studio, and the first thing he did was gleefully hold up all the records he’d brought with him for inspiration.
Hunters and collectors of rare and brilliant music in dusty sleeves have to dedicate whole rooms to house Northern Soul singles collections, acid house remixes, rap compilations and rare punk singles. They publicly ask for suggestions on storage units as the weight of their finds begin to bend ordinary shelves. Their back rooms look like record shops, with alphabetised drop-down bins they can tower over and rifle through.
Which is why it surprised me that Baker decided to lose such a big chunk of his collection. Mine may be paltry by comparison but still, I couldn’t do it. Not with my singles. Blondie’s Heart of Glass still reminds me of my first pre-teen romance. Love Vigilantes by New Order is leaving home in Leeds to go and live in Manchester. I can’t hear Dexy’s Midnight Runners without a flashback to a school disco where all the boys removed their shirts and were swinging them around their heads while singing along. I catch the opening notes of Into the Valley by the Skids and think back to the first gig I saw live on my own. I listen to Candi Staton’s Young Hearts Run Free and remember singing it on stage with a band in Berlin, aged 19. I know I’m no different to anyone else who loves music. But to sell the singles?
It’s a key point in life when you’re faced with the possibility of being separated from your record collection. When a parent or a partner challenges its value, it’s a defining moment. No one who claims to love you should ever ask you to put your records away – or, even worse, suggest you get rid of them so you can invest the money or space in something else. My dad’s friend Doug once told me about how his mother had thrown out his original Elvis 78s. Even as a 14-year-old with more time for The Clash than the King, I understood that this was insane.
It’s been weeks since the announcement, and I wonder where Baker’s got to with selling his collection, so I message him to see if he’s done the deed yet.
‘Well, I haven’t yet. Not because I’ve had second thoughts but because I can’t find the time or inclination to haul all the boxes out and leaf through them. I am trying to beard the “boy” to take the weight and do the right thing by his ancient pa. I have absolutely no affection for them, it must be said (the records not the kids). I mean there are complete runs of every top band of the ’70s but in that we have to acknowledge Gary Glitter. That said, I’m not insane. The early Bowie ones on Deram/Mercury are worth, according to Sotheby’s, “a fucking fortune”. It’s the lumpen bulk that have to go – and yes I’m looking at you Clash A labels and Pistols-signed Anarchy. I have zero qualms about punk. My acetate of I’m the Urban Spaceman on the other hand…’
Record collections link childhood to adulthood in a way the clothes we wore or books we read as teens, perhaps, don’t. They stand up, they ignite memories. Even if ‘the lumpen bulk’ are let go, we must keep the singles that made us who we are.
Are your records worth a fortune?
The Beatles
The Beatles (White Album)
£525,000
Ringo Starr’s copy of this 1968 album (which bore the number 0000001), featuring songs such as While My Guitar Gently Weeps, was sold in 2015 for $790,000 by Julien’s Auctions. If you have an original copy numbered in the first 100, you’re in luck.
Frank Wilson
Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)
£100,000
There are thought to be only a handful of surviving demo copies of this 1965 Northern Soul classic single, which was withdrawn from Motown’s Soul imprint before its official release. In 2020, a copy was sold for £100,000.
Dark
Dark Round the Edges
£25,000
Rock band Dark’s first album was released in 1972. It is now a holy grail for record collectors, with around 60 copies originally released; one sold at auction for £25,000.
Sex Pistols
God Save the Queen (A&M Records version)
£13,000
The Sex Pistols’ 1977 single was originally pressed for A&M Records, but they sacked the band before the record’s release and most copies were recalled and destroyed. One surviving copy sold for £13,000 at auction in 2019.
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
£7,100
First pressings of Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut album can be very valuable, with those in mint condition estimated to be worth thousands – in 2013, a first pressing sold for £7,100.
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