Revolve Record Fair owner Jon Ordon shares tips on what makes vinyl valuable

So much so that he has made a career of buying and selling records for more than three decades.

His business, Revolve Records, has been operating since 1991, initially as Discovery Records on Sydney's north shore before moving to Erskineville in the city's inner west.

Today Jon has a busy life selling records from his home in the Blue Mountains.

He also takes vinyl to the people at record fairs he holds.. His best-known is at Glenbrook, west of Sydney, but he also travels to cities like Orange, Bathurst and Newcastle, as well as Canberra, Queensland and SA.

Jon said he enjoys "whole warm analog sound" of vinyl and having a good-quality player to amplify it"

His favourite LPs include the Rolling Stones double album Exile on Main St, Neil Young's Harvest and most of David Bowie's '70s albums. All are "winners from start to finish", he said.

Jon's customers come from near and far. He said many of those who came to his Hornsby store were musicians with well known local acts.

Overseas enthusiasts included the English cricketer turned commentator Derek Pringle, who would make a special trip to the shop every time he came to Australia to cover an Ashes series.

"He was a big, big, buyer," Jon said. "He just loves Jamaican music. But just the obscure stuff."

Over the years John has traded with owners of some vast collections. One country and western lover had 200,000 records, he said.

"He bought quite a few radio stations when he was younger and used to go around getting the old 78s and records for his collection," he said

"Plus he was buying from catalogues in the US and all around the world."

Jon said there is a camaraderie among buyers and sellers.

"At record fairs, it's like a stamp club. Everybody meets up. They talk what they've found recently and what's out there. It's a whole different world, a vinyl world."

Others in the business sometimes give tip-offs and advice. "If they're not interested in one thing but know you are, they'll let you know."

Jon said it can be all "extremely niche". Some buyers, for example, look to obtain an entire label's recordings.

"But you've got all different types of niches. It could be country and western; it could be soul; it could be psych rock or punk rock or disco or house."

And then are the subcategories. "It gets pretty deep."

Jon said although he comes across some big collections, he has do a lot of culling.

"You might get 100,000 records but 99,000 might be crap. Then again half of it might be good. You just don't know - every collector is different."

He says there are probably many other big collections still to be unearthed, owned by people who have stopped buying records and have fallen "out of the loop"

Jon agrees collecting can be quite a solitary hobby - people playing and enjoying their music on their own.

He recalls a collection in Sydney's south that was part of a deceased estate.

"Its owner lived alone on a disability pension and had this sort of big steel shed out the back.

"And it was floor to ceiling with records. There may have been about 40,000 albums, including several thousand 45s and CDs."

"So it was two truckloads I had to take out of there."

But like many collections, Jon said, it wasn't entirely an Aladdin's cave.

"There was some good stuff sprinkled all through it, but there was a lot of rubbish too."

In the end, there was too much to go through, so he offered the sellers a per-box deal, which they accepted.

Jon donated about half to charity shops.

Jon says the ideal seller is someone who has great musical taste and has looked after their old albums.

The latter is especially important.

"Records have got to be in top shape to get reasonable money, and that includes the album covers. If they're randomly marked or they're all marked, it just kills a price."

For serious collectors, the number of pressings - how many times the album has been copied from the original master tape - is also vital..

Jon gives the example of a well-known act like the Beatles.

"Because they were so huge, the labels kept on re-pressing their vinyls. So with some of these popular releases, there might be a dozen-plus variations."

He says there might be 20 to 30 different variations of one album or a 45 disc.

This wasn't such an issue in the 1950s and '60s when vinyl records were a lot thicker, he says. But after the oil crisis of the '70s they became thinner and the grooves not as deep.

This meant a reduction in the rich warmer sound fans of vinyl so often talk about.

Jon said his passion for buying and selling vinyl remains strong.

"I started off as a collector. I'm still a collector. So you always have this thrill of finding something for yourself and discovering styles and music you've never seen before.

He also enjoys also hunting for something different and unusual to find for his clients, many of whom have wish lists.

"You get to know what a client would and wouldn't jump at. You think: 'They definitely have that' or 'Never seen that - there's a good chance they don't have it'.

He puts his success in the business down to hard work, trial and error, knowing all the old collectors, and acquiring a specialist knowledge of his product.

"I guess you become a little bit of an expert in all these different little fields, these sub-sub-genres. You kind of know what's common and what's not ... what's unusual."

And he's still learning. "There's always something new to find."

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