Boomers! Save Those Old (Vinyl) Records—
They May Be Worth A Lot

Like our younger friends and our kids (and increasingly, our grandkids), we baby boomers listen to our music on CD players or iPods. But unlike them, most of us still have a stash of vinyl albums tucked away somewhere. The old turntable has long since found its way to a remote corner of the attic and probably wouldn’t work even if we tried to dust it off and fire it up again. And since the music we grew up with (now referred to as “oldies”) is readily available in the new formats, there’s little practical reason to save all those old 12-inch records. But we haven’t been able to part with them.

Now, finally, our pack-rat instincts may finally be paying off. According to an article in the northern California Ukiah Daily Journal, “vinyl is vibrant again.”

A few collectible singles and albums fetch $1,000 and even more. But classic rock in general is in high demand, and reggae, punk, and blues, even more so.

As always, if you want to turn your treasures into cash, eBay is an excellent place to start. But if you’d rather hang onto them and wait for them to become really valuable antiques, you can still enjoy them in the meantime. A strange new mixture of old and new technology has surfaced: a turntable with a USB port that makes it possible to transfer the music from vinyl to digital formats. You can get a USB turntable on amazon.com for around 100 bucks.