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Post by yotonic on Aug 22, 2021 20:24:22 GMT -6
What's going on with the vintage gear market? It seems like things are going for way more than the decade old multiples. Is this a function of speculators or Reverb and other online markets?
I just saw a vintage LA-2A on Vintage King for $13,500. I thought I was nuts when I bought one from an iconic studio 3 years ago for $7,000. I love vintage gear and understand it's value, and have watched it and bought and sold it for years but the least few years is nuts. Just in the last 3 years I bought a few pieces like these that should not be doubling in value.
I bought a pair of mint matching KM84 all original, with original cases and mounts for $2,800 (off Reverb believe it or not) now they would fetch twice that easily.
A UREI 1178 in excellent condition for $2,100 (off of Reverb again) now it would fetch double.
The LA-2A I bought for $7k and I doubt it would fetch double, but with its provenance perhaps close.
I tried to buy a rack of vintage 1073s last week and made a great offer, the guy countered and before I could agree someone paid him significantly more money offline. Is anyone actually making music with this stuff? It sucks that you can't buy and trade gear now without being a hedge fund manager.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Aug 22, 2021 20:35:04 GMT -6
I don't know how they're connected, but it seems the covid crisis pushed vintage gear prices higher than ever. There does come a point where you get diminishing returns and these great vintage pieces are just not worth that much. The thing in sales though, is it takes only one.
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Post by EmRR on Aug 22, 2021 20:37:19 GMT -6
It’s kinda nuts on a bunch of things, then others are down or unchanged. Fickle rip tides.
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Post by popmann on Aug 22, 2021 20:48:58 GMT -6
What's a vintage UM70s going for? I think it's the only "vintage" piece I still have. I'll take the first $4k offer.
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Aug 22, 2021 21:03:19 GMT -6
Lots of things like this. Baseball cards. Used cars.
I think it’s a combination of supply chain disruption (impacting actual producers ) and collectors putting their money in physical stuff.
Try buying a freezer right now on Craigslist for example. It’s nuts.
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Post by jmoose on Aug 22, 2021 21:18:40 GMT -6
Somewhere around 1997 I had a chance to buy a quad of brown Helios modules for $200 each... 8 bills for the set. I passed because I was a broke college student and figured I could buy some anytime..?!!
Short time later I bought a pair of dbx 160VU for $600 some of the first truly pro gear I invested in. Sold em for I think $1500 a few years later and thought I did ok. Especially since I didn't like em that much. Now I see em for 2500-3k a pair which seems crazy.
Vintage equipment... like land they ain't making any more.
Prices have been going up for years. Started to escalate with the web... really escalated with the arrival of home toolz. Now everyone is a customer for a set of actual old Neves LA2a or whatever the piece of the day is.
Hedge fund cats? Possibly accurate. What I am 110% sure of is that nobody I personally know who makes a living from audio production can afford the old stuff.
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Post by Chad on Aug 22, 2021 21:36:45 GMT -6
My opinion:
We dumped money into the economy last year, and the usd is sinking against actual assets (ie “real money”) and other currencies (even the Canadian dollar has strengthened against usd). We saw Gold go from $1,200/ounce in March of 2020 to a tick over $2,000 by end of last Summer. Gold dropped again but it’s still $600/ounce higher than it was before it rose in the Spring of 2020. Housing market is the same. My parents just sold their home in 4 days in Oklahoma, and they got $50,000 more than they would have from 2008–2019. The interest rates being so low makes it almost like getting “free money” which drives a frenzy in that market (so it’s a seller’s market).
Anyway... hard assets aren’t only going up. The USD is dipping against them, so it feels like the cost of gear is flying. But it’s both... dollar dropping down on one elevator, while gear going up on the other elevator.
Again... my opinion. Probably not worth much.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2021 22:09:41 GMT -6
Somewhere around 1997 I had a chance to buy a quad of brown Helios modules for $200 each... 8 bills for the set. I passed because I was a broke college student and figured I could buy some anytime..?!! Short time later I bought a pair of dbx 160VU for $600 some of the first truly pro gear I invested in. Sold em for I think $1500 a few years later and thought I did ok. Especially since I didn't like em that much. Now I see em for 2500-3k a pair which seems crazy. Vintage equipment... like land they ain't making any more. Prices have been going up for years. Started to escalate with the web... really escalated with the arrival of home toolz. Now everyone is a customer for a set of actual old Neves LA2a or whatever the piece of the day is. Hedge fund cats? Possibly accurate. What I am 110% sure of is that nobody I personally know who makes a living from audio production can afford the old stuff. Techies and dentists ime love this shit. Some of them just use it to play video games. Nobody can afford this shit and this old stuff doesn't work as well as new shit if people take the time to learn it. I've been experimenting more with Kotelnikov and damn with some tweaking, it can do what an 1176 and LA2A couldn't even dream of and is 35 bucks on sale without following into the fatal sin of being a build your own compressor construction set. It really is bastard son of a GML 8900 and Waves Ren Comp. Granted your average home studio guy NEEDS the two knob compressors (1176, LA2A, DBX 160, SSL bus) because he's in over his head. I'm just glad that the FMR gear is still great and still selling.
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Post by earlevel on Aug 22, 2021 23:49:00 GMT -6
What's going on with the vintage gear market? It seems like things are going for way more than the decade old multiples. Is this a function of speculators or Reverb and other online markets? Supply, demand. Same exact reason gym equipment has gone through the roof. If you can't go to a gym, you can always put a gym in your garage. Instead of 5-10 (or whatever the gym size dictates) Olympic bars and associated weights servicing several hundred people, you have maybe a hundred of those people deciding to put in a garage gym—far bigger demand than outfitting however many gyms it takes to service an area. And, while shipments from China are constrained. And normally you'd have a constant flow of people selling their home gyms, keeping the price of weights down. (I bought US iron, wasn't cheap, had to wait on it.) Same thing with studios. Maybe before you had people with some simple gear at home, to work up some music and go into a real studio to record. Now you have aspirations of doing it all at home, but they want the gear they know (from the studios) that will give them that sound. All while parts from China get impacted. (For instance, waiting a while for my Great River ME-1NV due to the company waiting on a switch shipment.) And, as people said, in some cases people were getting paid an OK amount for doing nothing, all while there were no bars and limited restaurants. And the same for gainfully employed people like me—a typical vacation of heading off to Asia for a scuba diving trip was out of the picture. So even people not getting COVID funding had more available cash to spend on gear. Expansion in the number of studios (in-home), availability of cash, lag in expansion of production, all while parts were limited. And for vintage gear in particular, the supply is limited, demand drives prices directly.
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Post by chessparov on Aug 23, 2021 1:01:37 GMT -6
"Same exact reason gym equipment has gone through the roof" So you're saying it has to do with... Dumbbells? (Hit me drummer!)
Sorry guys, my vintage Nanocompressor and Type C Exciter are not_currently_for sale.
Chris
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Post by rowmat on Aug 23, 2021 1:15:41 GMT -6
I bought a pair of 80 Series Heritage Audio 8173 pre’s and a pair of 6673 pre’s new in 2015-2016 and now from the same dealer they are almost double the price!
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Post by Ward on Aug 23, 2021 4:12:02 GMT -6
We should expect the 'fake and fraud clones of vintage gear' industry to expand over the next few years.
Remember $25 Rolex watches?
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Post by rowmat on Aug 23, 2021 4:36:36 GMT -6
We should expect the 'fake and fraud clones of vintage gear' industry to expand over the next few years. Remember $25 Rolex watches? Yeah but mine only cost $12! 😆
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Post by Omicron9 on Aug 23, 2021 10:09:41 GMT -6
Yeah. From time to time, I'll browse ebay/reverb for a 414-B-ULS. I'd love to get a pair in here. The last time I looked, they were hovering around the $600 - 700 area. Now they're in the $1300 - 1600. range. Each. So the prices on those have more than doubled in the past year or so. I don't need one that badly; pass.
I sometimes wonder if there are buyers/sellers that decide if something is vintage that it's automatically worth about 80% more than it really is. Gah. I don't think of a B-ULS as being "vintage," but I guess someone does.
-09
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Post by Blackdawg on Aug 23, 2021 12:18:18 GMT -6
Pretty much all the reasons why have been stated.
But I was hoping to grab some KM84s this year...not gonna happen now. Sheesh. Doubled in price or more.
And wanted a pair of Daking FET II's but those things have basically doubled too. Crazy stuff.
Everything has though.
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Post by ericn on Aug 23, 2021 12:29:16 GMT -6
Yeah. From time to time, I'll browse ebay/reverb for a 414-B-ULS. I'd love to get a pair in here. The last time I looked, they were hovering around the $600 - 700 area. Now they're in the $1300 - 1600. range. Each. So the prices on those have more than doubled in the past year or so. I don't need one that badly; pass. I sometimes wonder if there are buyers/sellers that decide if something is vintage that it's automatically worth about 80% more than it really is. Gah. I don't think of a B-ULS as being "vintage," but I guess someone does. -09 Yeah the BULS was in production in 92 when I started at FULL CO, so if it’s vintage what am I ? No offense to our highly paid professional membership but I do believe that we saw a major bump in lawyers, dentist, CPA and finance guys spending $ on their hobbies during shutdown ( not audio but the banker across the hall bought a Peloton, no biggie but there is one in the gym downstairs that I’m one of 2 or 3 who use. It can go weeks with nobody marking adjustments, but then who else has a tape measure in his gym bag.) I get it these guys were liquid and bored, but also keep in mind that a lot of where you found the bargains was closed, a lot of stuff ended up in dealers hands where there is infrastructure to pay for, because nobody trusted the guy with an 87 on Craigslist.
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Post by Quint on Aug 23, 2021 14:00:08 GMT -6
I've mostly sworn off "vintage" stuff at this point. I just want stuff that works. Vintage stuff is a constant upkeep chore.
That being said I'd like the used market to come down on non-vintage gear. I'm in the market for a TLM 67/U87ai to eventually do the Max Mod, but not at these current used prices... Maybe this time next year they will have returned to normal.
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Post by lpedrum on Aug 23, 2021 14:05:45 GMT -6
I don't personally know anybody working in music that would pay five figures for a vintage LA2A. I do think it's possible that because of everyone staying home during Covid that the vintage market grew as people got educated sitting around watching gear videos, reading articles and poking around Reverb. Meanwhile we thankfully live in a Golden Age of boutique builders such as AudioScape, Locomotive and Iron Age etc. Think of the rack of gear 13.5K could buy from those builders!
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Post by Quint on Aug 23, 2021 14:30:04 GMT -6
I don't personally know anybody working in music that would pay five figures for a vintage LA2A. I do think it's possible that because of everyone staying home during Covid that the vintage market grew as people got educated sitting around watching gear videos, reading articles and poking around Reverb. Meanwhile we thankfully live in a Golden Age of boutique builders such as AudioScape, Locomotive and Iron Age etc. Think of the rack of gear 13.5K could buy from those builders! Yep. Unless you just gotta have the name recognition and bragging rights, the boutique (NEW) stuff is where it's at.
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Post by EmRR on Aug 23, 2021 14:43:27 GMT -6
An ended auction search showed an RCA BA-21A for $1500, took me awhile to sell a restored one for $600 a few years ago. Also saw an RCA power supply sell for $1600, second one like that in the last year. Used to seem absurd at $400 not long ago. Raw RCA BA-71's are still reliably at $250, as they have been for a decade.
Then there's the GE tube console that's essentially an RCA 76 I bought on ebay this spring for $750, after it dropped from $2500 over time. Go figure.
There's that mint KM84 I saw sitting for sale at $1200 last spring, price dropped to $1100, sat another month or two.....
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Post by seawell on Aug 23, 2021 15:00:38 GMT -6
I love a good vintage U87 but the price on some of those lately has been eye popping. 5k!
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Post by Blackdawg on Aug 23, 2021 15:08:03 GMT -6
An ended auction search showed an RCA BA-21A for $1500, took me awhile to sell a restored one for $600 a few years ago. Also saw an RCA power supply sell for $1600, second one like that in the last year. Used to seem absurd at $400 not long ago. Raw RCA BA-71's are still reliably at $250, as they have been for a decade. Then there's the GE tube console that's essentially an RCA 76 I bought on ebay this spring for $750, after it dropped from $2500 over time. Go figure. There's that mint KM84 I saw sitting for sale at $1200 last spring, price dropped to $1100, sat another month or two..... Yeah last spring (2020) but now they are going for 2200-2400 each. Crazy.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2021 17:53:59 GMT -6
I don't personally know anybody working in music that would pay five figures for a vintage LA2A. I do think it's possible that because of everyone staying home during Covid that the vintage market grew as people got educated sitting around watching gear videos, reading articles and poking around Reverb. Meanwhile we thankfully live in a Golden Age of boutique builders such as AudioScape, Locomotive and Iron Age etc. Think of the rack of gear 13.5K could buy from those builders! Nobody wants to tell them that 35 dollar Kotelnikov does more for less work but a peak crest might as well be some species of bird to them. Or in hardware world, Aphex, FMR, or recent little labs thing that sounds phenomenal in YouTube videos. Or any number of older digital comps with lookaheads and holds like Oxford Dynamics, Weiss, or Waves Ren/Vocal Rider. I’m just a bit obsessed with Kotelnikov now. No editing out as many breathes and mouth noises because it’s pumping from what happened 10 seconds ago. No imd build up from having to use a peak limiter first. Maybe you want to use a cool dirty pre before or some badass cracked out thing after leveling the vocal but the imd buildup doesn’t let you without hurting the sound in another way. And the boutique stuff that’s like 95% there of course. Serpent, Audioscape, BLA, etc. and it’s not muntzed out with offbrand caps that will die in 2 years, making random noise like art vla and 3630, or gets the action or tone right but not the other and you need both for it to work because all these old designs (opto, fet, diode bridge) were high distortion happy accidents with found parts and they made it work and sound pleasing because they had to. If you miss out on the pleasing, you get some gross bright sound or even worse, KT hardware that sounds like you ran your signal through a Presonus box for no goddamn reason.
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Post by ab101 on Aug 23, 2021 18:26:00 GMT -6
I don't personally know anybody working in music that would pay five figures for a vintage LA2A. I do think it's possible that because of everyone staying home during Covid that the vintage market grew as people got educated sitting around watching gear videos, reading articles and poking around Reverb. Meanwhile we thankfully live in a Golden Age of boutique builders such as AudioScape, Locomotive and Iron Age etc. Think of the rack of gear 13.5K could buy from those builders! Yep. Unless you just gotta have the name recognition and bragging rights, the boutique (NEW) stuff is where it's at. I agree. Plus it is good to support the innovators that dare invest their resources, time and energy on new products.
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Post by chessparov on Aug 23, 2021 19:58:23 GMT -6
Hmm... Will my MXL V69 go through the roof too? Thanks, Chris
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