Would You Pay $1,000 For a Vinyl Record?
Would you pay $1,000 for a vinyl record? It’s the kind of number that stops people as they scroll. For one shoegaze classic, it’s not far off the real price. Before we get into it: if you want to know about new pressings and reissues before they get anywhere near reseller prices, our free weekly newsletter is exactly what it’s for.
The record that nearly bankrupted a label
My Bloody Valentine‘s Loveless might be the single most expensive record to own in shoegaze. Released in 1991 on Creation Records, it’s widely considered one of the most influential albums ever made. If you love shoegaze, or indie music at all, this is required listening. Loud.
Making it nearly bankrupted the label. The recording reportedly ran to around £250,000 across close to twenty studios, and shortly after it came out, the band was dropped from Creation. Through the ’90s, as CDs took over and shoegaze fell out of fashion, the original vinyl pressing quietly became scarce. The people who loved it really loved it, and demand for that 1991 pressing never went away. It got so intense that even unofficial bootlegs built a real market of their own.
Kevin Shields finally put out an official analog remaster in 2018, a genuinely great sounding reissue that’s much easier to find. But plenty of fans still want the actual 1991 master. Original copies are changing hands for close to $1,000 on Discogs. Even bootlegs go for over $200.
It’s not just Loveless
We pulled sales data across the genre for our Price of Shoegaze Vinyl Records report, and the pattern isn’t limited to one album. Across the board, original shoegaze pressings have gone up an average of 473% since release. Hunting for a true original, rather than a reissue, typically means paying close to 8x what it cost on release day.
From the full Price of Shoegaze Vinyl Records report.
Some records have climbed even harder than Loveless. Slowdive’s Souvlaki tops our list at +3,284%. A record that cost $12 on release now sells for around $405 on average, and one copy sold for $1,351 in May 2026 alone. My Bloody Valentine’s debut, Isn’t Anything, isn’t far behind at +547%. The full ranking below shows just how far this reaches across the genre, not just its most famous record.
The 20 shoegaze records with the biggest price increases since release. Full methodology in the report.
If you want the full breakdown, every record we tracked, the biggest single price jumps we found, and what it actually costs to collect this genre today, the complete report is free to read: The Price of Shoegaze Vinyl Records →
The best way to not overpay
None of this is likely to reverse. Original pressings aren’t getting made again, and demand for this era of music keeps growing. The only real defence is timing: knowing about a reissue, a restock, or a repress the moment it happens, before resellers get to it first.
