No comments on this thread for 18 days and still it's pinned to the top of the forum list. Is there a reason? Anyway, while I'm here I'll comment on the valuations addition to the site and state or re-state as it has been said before that the value of music in any format is subjective and dependent on how much someone is prepared to pay and what some else is willing to accept as a price. The net reinforces this view with a variety of sites listing the same article at wildly variable prices. Usually, Amazon and Ebay have ridiculously high valuations as the listings are posted by individuals that are in general uninformed and have unrealistic high expectations. Discogs is a better guide as it is a current real time marketplace and items can be assessed across a variety of sellers. Still it's not perfect and as a young person in the Brisbane punk scene that knew a lot of bands in the late 70's I have a lot of independent singles from the the time. Discogs lists many of these around the $2 000 to $5 000 mark. Well, they're certainly not worth that in this country and round my neck of the woods you'd be lucky to get $10 for some of these items. Another thing I've noticed is that when people value there own things they tend to value them highly or even transpose the value of an original or rare release to a very commonly available re-issue.The point is value like money does not exist without faith and a lot of the time peoples' faith in the value of there own things is misplaced.

Does the Discogs system have a better valuation structure because they also allow sales on site and can easily track what an item sells for and have sales figures from other sites such as Popsike and even eBay?.

It's like many things on this site (45spaces; lists; tags; books world) that some view as "not of particular interest to me" therefore the stock answer should be just ignore them.

That's not quite true. It's not just that it doesn't interest me; it's that it risks to actively damage my ability to collect what interests me by paying a reasonable amount for any item. It risks also stagnating the market by causing sellers to believe that they MUST ask a certain amount of money for any item that has already achieved a certain amount through auction or sale. In short it risks to set in stone prices which are and always will have to be, flexible.

This problem has already been encountered by buyers and sellers alike as a result of the Record Collectors' Price Guide (which is now largely discredited), and whereas discogs provides a useful range of prices which adapt to circumstance, having a price on 45cat.com or 45worlds.com might give unreasonable expectations to sellers and stop buyers from otherwise making purchases.