Calculating the costs of vinyl

Superficially, investing in vinyl is a very good deal. If you assume that vinyl on average costs $5 less than the average CD, then even an audiophile-level system can be recouped in a few hundred records. But there are several complicating factors.

New vinyl releases are almost always more expensive than the equivalent CD releases. Only used vinyl is usually cheaper.
There's a large time commitment for vinyl, to clean it, maintain the turntable and possibly rip the vinyl to computer or CD. Time is money.
You're going to throw away at least 1-5% of your used vinyl purchases because they are unplayable for whatever reason (warping is the usual reason).

For these reasons, if you're pursuing vinyl for financial reasons, make sure you have all the angles covered for purchases. Vinyl maintenance and upgrades can add up very quickly. -User:Axon 22 April 2006