The Velvet Forum

Is anyone aware of which VU boot LP is the most valuable? Is there any way to value them other than the few occasions they turn up on eBay?

There was box-set of Searchin For My Mainline on vinyl that preceded the CD set - that's probably the rarest (a 12 x12" numbered edition of 500? is that right?) but there's no way to guess it's value beyond ebay and I don't think it's ever been up for auction.

With the advent of ebay and CDRs I reckon LP boots have lost some of value. When you can burn it to CDR (that booasts the volume nicely) scan the cover & back and make a replica sleeve it makes the LPs seem less collectable to some people. Before the advent of home CD recording you just had a crappy cassette copy and the sound was worse and you wanted the LP cos it was so much more desirable!

Yes the Searchin' set is probably the most sought out. But Sweet Sister Ray 2LP also ranks highly, although its easier to track down.
As a rough guess i'd say the Searchin' LP set was ?110+ item. The CD set is less collectable say ?80-90.

bleach wrote:With the advent of ebay and CDRs I reckon LP boots have lost some of value. When you can burn it to CDR (that booasts the volume nicely) ....

Hey, cmon....
Be serious, a CDR copy af a vinyl will NEVER be better than the original.
Hi-End CD players are trying to achieve the vinyl sound, but they will never do so.
Digital Audio is a restricted format ( 16 Bit, 44.1Khz).
But sound is something natural (analog), and not digital.

lostblues wrote:Hey, cmon....
Be serious, a CDR copy af a vinyl will NEVER be better than the original.

Yeah but some of us settle for less, not everyone is a diehard audiophile. I guess bleach's point wasn't the actual sound but the collectability of the vinyls as objects (lots of boots sound crappy anyway, not matter what the format) and I for one am an example of what he was saying.

I was trying to explain (badly!) that things have become less clear cut in collecting circles. There are some boot LPs I have bought, didn't like so I burnt them to CDR, scanned the sleeve and i'm happy to keep the copy and sell on the LP. There are some releases like Sweet Sister Ray 2LP that I love the sound of the vinyl and the covers great so I would never part with the LPs, its also a piece of VU boot history..Guess which category the Reed boot LP 'Live Sensations' (Germany 1984) fell into!

Honestly, bleach, how dare you part with those boots?! Because vinyl is relatively rare to begin with, I just keep 'em in my LP rack hidden in a closet if I dont like 'em. I have several LP's, like Blondes Have More Fun (i just discovered TODAY that title is a Jeff Beck reference!!), Stockholm 1974 (green cover), Some Kinda Love, Stiff On His Legend, Sweet Lou, and a few VU ones..including some rarities like ARCHETYPES!

BTW, dont let this stop you from transferring 'em to CD-R for MY benefit!!

just discovered TODAY that title is a Jeff Beck reference

I thought it was Rod Stewart...didn't he have an album of the same name in the 1970s?

Oh, yeah...that's what I meant...where the hell did I get Jeff Beck from?!

mg196 wrote:Oh, yeah...that's what I meant...where the hell did I get Jeff Beck from?!

Rod came to prominence singing for the The Jeff Beck Group.