Warning! Using this book can cost you money! Having published four editions of this guide prior to this one, and having seen how they are used in the marketplace, I can safely state that a high percentage of the users of this publication are overpricing their records. The simple fact is that our clientele, comprising more than 1000 avid collectors of records in about 50 countries, is large enough that we are able to get more for most collectable records than can the average shop with classical records for sale (all of the prices in this publication are our actual selling prices.) Further, a large part of the classical record market these days is in Japan, where collectors seem to have a real yen for records. Thus, certain labels (e.g. Westminster) bring the prices they do virtually solely due to the Japanese market. So to the used record store owner who believes, as I do, that the only way to make money selling classical records is to move your inventory, my advice is very simple: Unless you have a large international clientele, price your records at half or less the indicated prices in this book, and you should be able to make money on your classical records.

The market value of classical records is continuing to adjust to market forces. A majority of classical LPs has declined in value since the publication of the 4^th edition five years ago. This decline is particularly true for audiophile records on the RCA and Mercury labels, most of which are way too common to have indefinitely sustained the high prices which they were at one time bringing. For other common labels, the compact disk has certainly contributed to the decline in prices. Many collectors who had not converted over to CDs by the time of the last edition have done so in the intervening time. Some used record stores, such as Princeton Record Exchange, which I visit with some regularity have indeed reduced their prices noticeably over the last few years. I’m sure that the stores which have done so have continued to sell LPs. Others are probably wondering what has happened to their LP market.

Since the primary function of this publication will be as a price guide, it should be emphasized that the prices listed herein are retail prices. Persons wishing to sell their records to a dealer should not expect to get anything close to a retail price. Most dealers will pay between 10% and 25% of their expected selling prices for records. This may seem low to the uninitiated, but dealing in used records is a very labor-intensive occupation and dealers cannot simply reorder any items which they may be able to sell multiple copies of, as would a dealer of any new commodity. Prices are also predicated on the condition of the record in question being in "A" or mint condition. A disk with even a single scratch or mark will be worth usually much less than half as much as a perfect copy. Sometimes, too, a disk will have a noisy pressing (not typical of the company) or have invisible but sonically-apparent defects. Thus prices in this guide are intended to be only for records which both play and look pristine. The condition of covers is also very important, and covers with ring wear, water damage or holes punched in them (to indicate cut-out status) will lower the value of the record. Let’s face it: Records are artifacts! If you just want to hear Wilhelm Furtwangler’s performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, you can find one in any decent CD shop for $12.00 or so. But if you want the first edition on Urania, you’ll likely have to pay a knowledgeable dealer several hundred dollars for the same performance. The phenomenon of premium prices for first editions of LPs is comparable to that of first edition books. No one expects to buy a first edition of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities for the same price as he can buy the latest paperback incarnation.

This guide is arranged first by format (LPs, 45s, 78s, CDs. Open Reel Tapes & Cassette Tapes). Every other format is printed on a different color of paper to aid in locating that format’s listings. Within each format, labels are listed alphabetically (keeping in mind that the computer will alphabetize according to its own system: L’Oiseau-Lyre will come before La Brea and La Voz do Dono before Lamarg.) Labels of different countries which happen to have the same name are interfiled so that, for example, American and English Decca are combined. Knowledgeable collectors will be able to distinguish between the issues of each company by the prefixes and by the contents of the records. This system is better, in the author’s opinion, than that of requiring someone who has a record in hand to know the country of origin before he can look up the value.

Within each label, the records are organized numerically. The first column under each label is the prefix, but prefixes are not used for ordering purposes unless there are two or more issues by a company with the same number. The next column is the manufacturer’s number. Immediately following that number (with no space) may be a symbol denoting the mode of recording. An asterisk indicates the item is recorded in true stereo, e = electronic stereo, Q = quadraphonic, D = digitally recorded, d = digitally remastered from an original analog recording and A = acoustic record (applicable only to 78rpm records). If none of these symbols appears, the recording is monophonic, and if a 78rpm record, electrically recorded (or in some cases, evidence of the author’s ignorance of the recording mode for that disk, as he has appended the "A" symbol only to those records he is reasonably certain are acoustically-recorded.).

The third column is the retail value, in dollars. This is followed by a complete description of the item. In a few cases, one may find an OR in the middle of the description with another description following. This indicates that the record company has stupidly issued two different records under the same number. Fortunately, in the great majority of cases, there is no significant price difference between these two like-numbered issues. At the end of some descriptions, you will notice that there is a number in parentheses, e.g. (3). This indicates the number of records in a set when that number is greater than one.

In the prefix column, the author has generally regarded letters in the manufacturer’s catalog number to constitute the "prefix" and numbers to constitute the "number." Because of utter lack of uniformity between one company and another, and even very often within the same company from one of its releases to the next, the author has had to make some exceptions to this policy. In many cases, he considered a hyphen to separate the prefix from the number. Thus RCA ARL1-2698 is found herein under RCA and then under 2698, and will be alphabetically just before RCA LSC 2698, an entirely different record. The author has attempted to achieve consistency at least within each record company in this regard, if not always from one company to another. Sometimes companies seem bent on obscuring what exactly is their catalog number on a given disk. In cases where there may be more than one number which might be regarded as the issue number for a given disk, the author has generally taken the number from the location which is most prominent. In this regard, he considers the order of prominence to be: Front cover, back cover, spine and label. If there is no number in any of these places, as a last resort, he has taken the number from the land area between the grooves and the label on side one of the disk.

Another area which involves judgment calls on the author’s part is that of the name of the label. For records which seem to not be issued by any recognizable company, the author has listed them generally under the label name Private. In some cases, artists published records themselves, and in those cases the artist’s name is given as the label. Sometimes, there will be one company name on the cover and another on the label. In such cases, priority is usually given to the name on the label. In other cases, the name of the company changed over the years, and this makes for more judgment calls. In the case of HMV vs. EMI, for instance, the author has used HMV for all 78s and only for those LPs which do not include a reference to Electric and Musical Industries at the bottom of the back of the cover.

For certain labels, the author has inserted his own codes into the prefix column, always after the actual manufacturer’s prefix. This has always been done only in those cases where the pressing vintage of a given record plays a big part in determining a record’s worth. In almost all cases, early pressings are worth more than later ones, in part due to the fact that collectors desire first editions and in part due to the sad fact that earlier pressings are almost always better than later ones. The labels for which the author has inserted his own prefix symbols are RCA, Victrola, Mercury, Everest and London. The following codes will allow the user to ascertain a particular pressing vintage of these labels:

As an addendum to the above, it should be mentioned that pressing vintages for EMI and English Decca recordings are also of crucial importance for the value of these records. This guide does not make a distinction in the pressing vintages of these records. However, the various pressings of these two labels can be ascertained from the Mikrokosmos Labelography, published by Peter Fulop in Toronto. Copies may be purchased directly from Ars Antiqua. Early pressings of these labels may be worth anywhere from two to ten times what later pressings are worth. Generally, the values in this guide are given for later pressings, and so caution should be exercised when making transactions involving either of these labels, as some of the early pressings are quite valuable.

Note that for RCA LPs, the pressing vintage is given only for records with catalog numbers LSC 1800 to LSC 3000 and LSC 6000 to LSC 7000. For Victrolas, early pressings exist only up to about VICS 1339, and for Everest, from SDBR 3000 to SDBR 3040 or so. In addition, certain other labels, including Lyrita, are always worth more when they are pressed in England rather than some other country (e.g. Holland).

For the manufacturer’s number column, leading zeroes in the number are always omitted. The user will therefore find Melodiya A10 00059 under Melodiya 59 (the A10 being considered the prefix in this example). Also, particularly in regard to Melodiyas, but also applicable to certain other labels, only the first number is listed when multiple numbers are given to represent the number of sides (as in the case of Melodiya) or disks in a set: Melodiya C10 15083-84 is found simply under 15083 and Harmonia Mundi HM 252-53 (a 2-disk set) is listed only under 252, the first number. This system should make the guide easier to use. The field is otherwise straightforward for the great majority of entries, although in a few cases, hyphens or letters have been omitted when they otherwise would have occurred in this field. Thus, for Alpha 5069-5, one will find the number listed as 50695. Also in the case of Melodiyas, one will occasionally encounter a prefix of C10+ or C+, etc. The "+" sign indicates that this is a set which also exists as a single disk with the same prefix and number. To avoid confusion, the author has added the "+" to distinguish these otherwise indistinguishable (as far as the computer is concerned) records. In most cases, the numeric suffixes 1, 2 & 4 designating respectively LPs, CDs and Cassette Tapes, have been omitted from all numbers.

As the size of the label name field in Ars Antiqua's computer program is limited to 25 characters, a few of the longer company names have had to be abbreviated or truncated to that length. Thus, a label such as French Broadcasting System in North America shows up as French Broadcasting System.

What should the user expect to find among the approximately 191,000 different items in this guide? Essentially all records which are considered material suitable for inclusion in the lists published by Ars Antiqua. The categories so considered are all recordings, in any format, of classical music, shows & soundtracks, spoken recordings (such as plays), and miscellaneous sorts of records with sound effects, sampler disks, audio test records, etc. What will not be found herein are any recordings of jazz, pop, soul, country, western and folk/ethnic music (a minor exception will be any of those categories which might be considered audiophile). These categories will be covered in an upcoming price guide and will be published by my colleague Charles Pearce in the not-too-distant future. Any recording, presuming it fits into one of the classical, etc., categories will be found herein if it has at some point in the last 17 years that we have been computerized passed through our hands. Obviously, there are a lot of eligible records which are not listed herein which we have yet to encounter. Another 50,000 of these will probably show up in the next edition, just as this edition contains about that number of items which were not in the 4^th edition. One-of-a-kind acetate transcription disks are generally not included in this guide, the two major exceptions being the Rarissima and Rare Avis labels, which (while being acetates) were offered for sale commercially, albeit in a very limited context.

In a few cases, the user may not find labels which he or she would expect to find. This occurs mainly when the company has changed the name of the label, but continued to use the same or a similar numbering system. So that these records will be found together, the author has elected to use only one name or the other in most cases. Below are most of the common labels that might be problematic:

In the case where one company owns another, or publishes records on more than one label, there is always a problem as to which name to use to list the records. Victrola LPs could just as easily be referred to as RCA Victrola. The author in such cases has attempted to correspond to general usage. However, in the case where one company has licensed records of another one, the records will be found under the licensor rather than the licensee. Thus, one will find recordings licensed from Melodiya by Angel Records under Angel and not under Melodiya, or even under Melodiya-Angel. They were, after all, remastered and pressed in the US.

For 78rpm records, the label names can be particularly confusing! There are labels, for instance, called "Disque pour Gramophone," Disque Gramophone," "Disco Gramophono," "Schallplatten Grammophon," "Concert Record Gramophone," "Gramophone Concert Record," etc. These records originate from the same international company, His Master’s Voice and its various foreign branches. The author has not particularly sought to try to sort out all of the identical issues of these various branches, so they will be found under whichever version of the name was on the records which came through the premises of Ars Antiqua.

SELLING RECORDS TO ARS ANTIQUA

This price guide will also serve to give the reader a means of disposing of his or her unwanted classical records, or at least some of them. There are many, many LPs and 78s which we no longer will buy at any price. Generally, we will not be interested in anything which does not have a value of at least $12.00 (per disk, in case of multi-disk sets). Our purchase price will be from 10% to 25% of our selling price, and we will be happy to make offers on your good condition records. Feel free to send us a list of what you have. In the case of large collections, we will gladly travel to inspect them on site. We will also do appraisals for records you are donating to not-for-profit institutions. We can usually be reached by phone during the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays at:

812-876-6553 (live line)

812-876-6552 (24-hour Voice Mail)

812-876-6551 (24-hour fax line)

Our e-mail address is manager@arsantiqua.com. Visit our web page at www.arsantiqua.com, or write us at:

Ars Antiqua
3378 Disk Drive
Ellettsville, IN 47429
USA

For those who encounter someone else’s copy of this guide and would like to order their own copy, the price, while supplies last, is $150.00 plus postage ($4.00 in the USA and $8.00 surface or $25.00 air outside the USA).

David E. Canfield