I had a similar path as yours, but maybe 2 years earlier I started stocking up on vinyl, as you could get entire lots of donated records from goodwill.com for pennies on the dollar. Classic Jazz, Soul, Funk and Fusion re-ignited my passion for records and now I have a few IKEA BESTAs full of 'wax'.
Couple notes -
- re-release vinyl is not as good these days, especially when clear or multi colored.
- 180 gram vinyl is maybe a little better than yer average release from today, but the cheap pressings of the 60s and 70s (when well preserved) are much better than newer pressings.
- That said, Im glad they are re-pressing stuff today as some original prints or early prints are hard to come by/expensive...
In the US and Canada, records from the late 1970's and into the 80's were usually pretty poor quality. Oil was expensive and so vinyl was often recycled and tracks were sometimes pushed together to make longer records. I would guess reprints of those records would fix those shortcomings.
Couple notes - - re-release vinyl is not as good these days, especially when clear or multi colored. - 180 gram vinyl is maybe a little better than yer average release from today, but the cheap pressings of the 60s and 70s (when well preserved) are much better than newer pressings. - That said, Im glad they are re-pressing stuff today as some original prints or early prints are hard to come by/expensive...