Having visited two record fairs in Leeds over the past few weekends, I have come to the realisation that they are fairly pointless these days. My belief was always that the entire point of record fairs was to pick up a bargain or something rare. Nowadays, fairs are just expensive record shops. Just about every record I picked out over the last few weeks, I could get cheaper online. The cheap records are usually in absolute rubbish condition, the decent stuff in good condition is basically the Discogs med price and the rare stuff is ultra-expensive. I had a chat with one of the regular sellers and, to be fair to him, he said that his margins are so tight that when he gives a small discount to people buying more than four records at one time, it often wipes out his profit. The only positive is one seller, who has a big collection of new, non-mainstream records. He clearly picks up bulk stock – presumably excess stock from HMV or record labels needing warehouse space. He sells his new records at between £12 and £20, so if you do find anything you didn’t pick up when released, you can » Continue Reading.