Vinyl Collectors Guide Part 1: Choices and Preparation

This series is meant to be a guide for vinyl collectors who want to build 

a collection of an specific artist / band. In about 3 parts and steps I will show

the best ways and tools to build a specific collection while saving money, effort and time.

Introduction

So what is this meant to be? In short term it is just a guide on how to collect records of an specific artist or band with help of the internet. You may now say "Why would a need a guide for this?" and I can see that it may seem unnecessary on the first sight. The reason why I'm doing this and why I don't find it unnecessary is my personal experience. When I started my first collection of a band it was quite a mess and I didn't know very much about it. So many records, so many variants, represses and so on. Beside that I didn't know which record was worth quite a lot and which wasn't. This guide may help you if you're thinking about starting a collection and hopefully prevent you from spending too much money, time and nerves on that. Collecting is a hobby and a hobby should be fun. So lets start.

Choices

Before you even think of buying or trading something you should of course decide whose artist or whose bands records you want to collect. Your favorite band is always a good one to start with but if this doesn't work out for any reason (no vinyl releases or something like that) you may find another one that you think is worth collecting. This should really be the easiest part of it.

After you decided what to collect you should think about the probable scale of the collecting. This means that there are different ways of collecting. Let me try to put them together:

• Variant Collecting: You really collect everything that has been released so far (on vinyl). Every LP, EP, Split and so on. You don't want just one piece of every record, you want all variants, editions etc. that have existed. This is the most expensive and probably most time consuming way of doing it but probably also the most satisfying one. 

• One-Of-Each:  This is probably the most "common" one and is a good option if you want to start a second / additional collection besides another big collection. You get one record of every record the artist released so far. You're free to choose if you want certain variants (if there are different ones) or if you don't care about such things. Depending on the size of the discography this may be a easy thing to accomplish but collecting a certain variant of every record can add quite a twist if there are some more rare records.

• Just-The-Essentials: This is a collection "light". You only acquire the essential records by the artist. You still may want a special variant of the records you want to acquire but in fact this is only about getting the most important records of this artist.

Of course it is completely up to you what you choose to do. You can also mix up these "styles" of collecting, e.g. by just collecting the 7"s by variants and getting only one copy of the LPs. This is your decision although you should decide before you seriously start collecting because you will try to keep an eye out for the items you'll want to collect. So if you don't know if you really need something you may miss some rare items because you formerly didn't want to collect that item. There are still some additional options that you might also consider. If you say you want EVERYTHING, what does that really mean? The following things should also be thought through:

• Do I collect compilations? Some artists have songs on compilations that were released on vinyl. Do these count for your collection? If you do variant collecting, do you also have to collect all variants of those too? Do you only want to collect compilations that have unreleased / additional songs on it?

• Do I collect associated artists? Some artists or band members have sideprojects or former bands. Do you want to collect all the stuff by those as well? Again, do you want to collect variants for those too?

The following step will help you to decide if your decision depends on factors like money and time. Although I recommend to take it easy. Of course you may want to hurry in some cases (e.g. Preorders) but you shouldn't spend money you don't have or make this a marathon for you. You should try to feel happy about every single record with which you come close to completion. And to point it out once: These aren't the only ways of doing it but if you want to do it "seriously" and want to have a complete collection then this might be the best ways.

Preparation

At this point you already got an idea of what you might want to do and what you don't want to do. This step is the linking piece between the choices and the beginning of the actual core part of the collection - the collecting.
As I already pointed out before there are quite often several variants of one record on different colors or with different artwork. No matter if you already chose to just collect one of each of if you already know that you want to do the full thing - this step helps to get an overall look over the discography and all the stuff you may want or don't want to collect.

1. Discography Overview: The first reasonable step is to take a look at the discography in its entire size. You may want to check this out on Wikipedia or a special Bandwiki but these informations are often unprecise or not complete at all. I recommend that you take a look at the bands / artists official website and maybe the website of the label that the artist is signed on. If you want to keep the the view you can transcript the list of releases into a spreadsheet or a textdocument where you can later also add the variants and other usefull informations. Note that this is not necessary to keep track of your collection. I will show you ways to do this in another part of this series. 
2. Variant Overview / Pressing information: Now that you know which records exist you still maybe have no idea which of these releases are even out on vinyl nor you know if there are multiple variants, editions or reissues. For this step we will use the first tool that you should definitely bookmark in your browser: Discogs ! Go there and type in the name of your band / artist. If your artist / band hasn't just started their career a week ago and if they a record out on any label, Discogs should know. The first thing to do now is comparing your discography that you looked up with the listing on Discogs. Is there something missing or does Discogs maybe even seem know more thant the bands / artists website? Anyway most information on Discogs is reliable and useful which I can say from experience. Often there are bootlegs or similar unofficial releases which won't be listed on any official website. Discogs will most probably know them. As you probably already have seen, Discogs also knows most variants. To be clear: Those informations are sometimes not complete and rarely also wrong but if you see a mistake you can correct it as soon as you have up signed up, which you should definitely do! The best part of Discogs isn't the pressinginformation. It's the ability to buy or sell every listed record which will make collecting quite comfortable but this is also something for another part of this series.
   As already noted, the pressing information on Discogs are not always correct or complete. So for this step we will need some more reliable information that you may copy into your spreadsheet.
   A simple Googlesearch will help you out there. Type in the album name and maybe also the artists name and add "pressing info". What you now get depends on the prominence of the artist but also on the label. The label is the place where you want to go now. Most indipendent labels provide you with the pressing info of the records they put out. Every label handels it their own way but you will eventually find the info pretty fast on their website. If the label doesn't provide any information, doens't have a website or something else you may only look at your other searchresults. Often you will find threads in boards where other recordcollectors asked the same question we do know. You will keep the name of these boards in mind as you will most probably read about them again in the next part.
   If you finally found the info then copy it into your spreadsheet or set a bookmark so you can access the information again later.

Variants on Discogs

Pressing Info provided by a Label

Now that you have an idea of what you're about to do you should decide which way you want to choose. If you realized that six albums with twelve variants each are just too much to collect you can still choose the variant you like the most, acquire it and go the way of each-of-one. Although you should decide this right now as the next part will already go a lot deeper and you will begin to buy / trade and actively search for the items.

See you for the next part!