[ian_d]

There's also the vinyl-only availability of a lot of recordings, especially if you're interested in niche pre-80/90s genres. I collect private press / avant jazz from the 60s and 70s along with some soul/funk, and while there are reissues available for some recordings in a lot of cases your only option for a good quality copy is finding an original copy of the vinyl record.

The 'niche' collecting part of vinyl records is really interesting and I wish someone would do a good story on that instead of the "vinyl's not dead!" approach.

(self plug: I wrote/run https://gripsweat.com which tracks auctions and sales so if you're curious about high-dollar niche records it's a good listening / browsing resource.)