How do you know if a northern soul record is worth any money?
Ever since the great vinyl revival of the 2010s, the price of the format has continued to skyrocket.
Even a brand-new pressing can set you back as much as £50 these days, but that’s nothing compared to what some discs fetch on the second-hand market, particularly when we’re discussing the mystical landscape of northern soul records.
Supply and demand are important economic principles in virtually every kind of market, but they seem particularly relevant when discussing northern soul vinyl. Emerging during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the northern soul scene was built upon increasingly obscure, overlooked, and impossibly rare American soul singles which would soundtrack all-night dances in the clubs and dancehalls of northern England.
Given how rare some of those discs were, and the lengths that enterprising young DJs went to drag them out of obscurity, northern soul records have always demanded a pretty hefty pricetag. In the modern age, now that the first generation of northern soul devotees typically has a bit more disposable income to spend – and very few of them are still scoring amphetamines at soul all-nighters – those prices are only getting higher.
Back in 2020, a copy of the northern soul holy grail, Frank Wilson’s ‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’, sold for an eye-watering £100,000, for instance.
Before you go rooting around in your attic for that box of old singles, though, it is important to note that not every soul record will make you rich. After all, northern soul is a somewhat elusive tag which is often misplaced. Not every soul record from the 1960s or 1970s can be considered northern soul. Although popular Motown records and old Dusty Springfield singles are routinely mislabelled as northern soul by record dealers looking to add an extra nought to a price tag, true northern soul originals are a little more difficult to come by.
Typically, northern soul singles were pressed in very small numbers and published by tiny independent record labels across the United States. Labels like Okeh, Ric-Tic, and Golden World often dominate the conversation, but there is a seemingly endless plethora of other, smaller labels that fit the northern criteria. It is those small labels and obscure pressings that you want to be looking for when it comes to flogging northern soul records, but they don’t always guarantee a gold rush, either.
Even if you are in possession of a true, original, bona fide northern soul record, there are myriad factors which influence the potential sale price of the record. For instance, if the song was a big floor-filler at The Twisted Wheel or Wigan Casino, it tends to fetch a higher price, as in the case of ‘Do I Love You’. The rarity is also a factor; only a handful of copies of the Frank Wilson single are known to exist, which inevitably makes it more expensive and in-demand than, for instance, Edwin Starr’s ‘Back Street’.
To make matters even more complicated, northern soul events are still a weekly occurrence all across the country, meaning certain singles become more in-demand than others for DJs to play. Additionally, a number of different reissue and bootleg labels have sprung up in recent years, diluting the northern soul market with new pressings, which makes originals harder to find.
The price of your northern soul collection is dependent on exactly which discs you have and which specific pressings they are. Fear not, though, there are still some methods in which you can find the worth of your collection.
For starters, there are numerous northern soul record dealers still in operation, who should be your first port of call when it comes to valuing your collection. John Manship is among the most well-known of these dealers, and it was he who sold that copy of ‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’ back in 2020. There is also the online vinyl platform Discogs, which can give you a fairly good estimate of a record’s price based on previous sales statistics.
So, if you are still sitting on a collection of northern soul singles from your youth back in Wigan, you might be sitting on a pot of gold or, at the very least, some beer money for your next all-nighter.
