A customer came in last Tuesday holding three phone screenshots. Same record — a sealed copy of a 1979 Australian pressing of a Sports album, nothing especially rare — and three different prices from three different Melbourne shops within walking distance. $45 at one, $80 at the second, $135 at the third. He wanted to know which one of us had lost the plot.

The honest answer is none of us. The market for deadstock — sealed, unplayed original-pressing vinyl — has become genuinely chaotic over the last 18 months, and the price differences you’re seeing aren’t shop owners getting things wrong. They’re three different theories about what deadstock is worth in 2026, and only one of them can be right.

What “deadstock” actually means and why it matters

Quick refresher because I had this conversation three times last week. Deadstock means the record was pressed, packaged, and then sat unsold in a warehouse or distribution chain without ever being played or properly retailed. It’s not a reissue. It’s not a used copy. It’s the original pressing, sealed, untouched, often with the original price sticker still on the shrink.

True deadstock is rare. Most “deadstock” copies that turn up are estate sales where someone bought the record and never played it, which is technically NOS (new old stock) rather than deadstock, but the trade has gotten lax with the terminology. For collectors, the distinction matters because true deadstock has provenance — you can usually trace where it came from.

The supply collapse nobody predicted

Here’s what changed. In 2020 and 2021, COVID closures and a deluge of new collectors meant that warehouse finds of old Australian and New Zealand pressings — the kind of thing that used to surface in batches of 50 or 100 — got cleared out faster than they had in decades. A wholesale operator in Sydney told me he sold through three decades of accumulated stock in 14 months.

What’s left now is the tail. The records sitting in lofts, garages, the back rooms of country newsagents that used to sell records as a sideline in the 70s. Those finds still happen but they’re smaller, more sporadic, and the prices being paid at the source have caught up. The era of buying 200 sealed copies for $4 each from a deceased estate is functionally over.

Three pricing theories

The $45 shop is doing “move it” pricing. They want stock turning over, they assume there are more copies out there, and they’d rather sell three records at $45 than have one sit at $90 for two months. Fair enough as a strategy if you’ve got volume coming through.

The $80 shop is doing market pricing. They’ve looked at recent Discogs sales for the same pressing, factored in the sealed premium, knocked off a bit because Australian buyers don’t always pay full Discogs median, and landed at $80. This is what most shops do.

The $135 shop is doing “this one’s special” pricing. Either they think the Australian pressing has a story (it’s actually a slightly different mix to the international release), or they’re holding inventory for the long game and don’t mind if it sits, or they had to pay a premium to acquire it and refuse to sell at a loss. Sometimes all three.

None of them are wrong. They’re playing different games.

What collectors should actually do

Here’s my advice and you can take it for what it’s worth. For deadstock, you’re paying for two things: the unplayed audio quality and the collector’s premium. If you actually want to listen to the record, the first matters and the second doesn’t. If you want to flip it in five years, the second matters more.

For most punters who walk into my shop asking about deadstock, what they really want is a good-condition, properly-stored copy they can play. That’s a near-mint used copy, which sits at maybe 60-70% of the sealed price for the same record. Save your money. The sealed premium is largely an investment premium and like most investment premiums, it’ll move in unpredictable directions.

The exception: Australian pressings of records where the local pressing is genuinely different from the international one. Festival mixes, EMI Australia variations, certain Mushroom pressings that used different masters. For those, the sealed copy in original Australian packaging is the real artefact, not just a financial product.

The Discogs effect on Aussie shops

I should also mention this because customers ask. Discogs prices for Australian pressings have become the rough reference point everyone uses, including me, but they’re a bad reference point for several reasons. The data set is small, the buyer pool skews international, and there’s a postage premium baked into international Discogs sales that doesn’t apply to a local sale.

If you’re using Discogs to argue with a local shop owner about price, take the median and knock 20-30% off for the local market. That’s roughly where most honest shops should be sitting. If a shop is asking 50% above Discogs median, they need to be able to explain why — usually it’s condition, sometimes it’s a pressing variation, occasionally it’s just optimism.

Where I think this lands in 2027

Short version: deadstock prices will keep climbing for genuinely scarce titles, slowly drift downward for the ones where supply turns out to be larger than collectors thought, and the gap between best and worst pressings of the same record will widen.

The shops that win will be the ones who genuinely know what they’re selling and can explain it. The shops that lose will be the ones who price purely off Discogs medians without listening to the records or knowing the catalogue. I had a punter in last week who knew more about a particular King Crimson pressing than I did. That’s the customer base now. They’ve read everything, they’ve watched the YouTube videos, and they want shop owners who can keep up.

Anyway. The Sports record. The $80 shop probably had it right. But I’d have personally paid the $45 and stuck it on the turntable that afternoon. Different game.