Maybe you’re right, “Should own” sounds a bit didactic, doesn’t it? But even in a magazine series with a tradition of comically long titles like this one, it would have been hard to fit a subtitle like “…if you unexpectedly come into a large sum of money or can otherwise find a way to legitimise the expense” on to the cover.
We’re talking about an ideal situation here. And it’s worth saying that while the universe of rare records is certainly a place where money will help, this isn’t a list of the world’s most valuable records (although some are included). There are other publications who specialise in that kind of thing, and do it very well.
What we’ve more been motivated by here is a slightly vaguer principle: the intersection of excellent music, historic circumstance and scarcity that we have called “interesting”, because that’s what it is. Many of them will add a chunk to your insurance premium (where exactly do you keep that Lennon/McCartney “HMV” acetate once you’ve paid £77,000 for it?). All would add lustre to your collection and experience of music.
As someone who has fairly recently watched a beermat with Mark E Smith’s handwriting on it sail over their budget at auction, maybe the key driver here, though, is records with a historic proximity to their makers – what the rare book dealers might call “association copies”. Although this can bring up other issues. One is the more valuable item, but there is surely more pleasure in owning what was formerly Paul Morley’s copy of the Factory Sample EP than there is a John Lennon album autographed by the former Beatle on the day of his murder.
Collecting records is a world of hypotheticals, but the 200 records that we’ve included here are anchored in fact. Our friends at Omega Auctions – the country’s leading vinyl auction site – have opened their archive to us, and so we’ve been able to bring you tantalising images of actual sold items, along with the prices they’ve achieved, which we’ve grouped by artist, and ranked by their interest. There have been some tough calls.
We think it’s a crisp and inspiring magazine in very playable condition. Hopefully it will reveal some new ways in to the music you love – and that which you don’t yet know. The perfect record collection is never finished, and is always over the next horizon. We very much hope we’ll be on that journey with you.
Enjoy the magazine! You can get your copy here.
John Robinson, Editor