Vinyl Outselling CDs For First Time Since 1987

Above, some of my vinyl records. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Sales of vinyl records topped CDs for the first time in over 30 years.

This is not surprising to me, vinyl sounds much better than CDs in my opinion. Even though I do buy CD (mainly because my RV has a built-in CD player), I have bought several LPs and 45 rpm singles in recent years and kept all of my vinyl records that I purchased since the early 1960s. 

Back in the late 1960s on through the 1980s, I divided by purchases between cassette tapes and vinyl. For my car cassette players, I later started buying just vinyl and made cassette tape copies for my cars.

CBS News reported:

Vinyl records are back and more popular than ever. A new report found that vinyl record sales continued their more than decade-long growth in 2022, and for the first time in more than three decades, outsold CDs in the number of units. 

The report, published by the Recording Industry Association of America on Thursday, found that physical formats of music saw another year of overall growth in 2022, totaling $1.7 billion. Making up nearly three-quarters of that growth were vinyl records, which saw a 17% increase in revenues for $1.2 billion. This marked the product's 16th year of consecutive growth, RIAA said. 

It also marked the first time since 1987 that more vinyl records were sold than CDs, which saw a revenue decline of 18% in 2022. The group said that 41 million vinyl albums were sold last year, compared to 33 million CDs.

To read more, go here. 

SD Bullion Reaches $1 Billion In Sales

One of my favorite silver coin dealers, SD Bullion, has reached $1 billion in sales during a calendar year.

According to Yahoo! Finance:

TOLEDO, Ohio, Feb. 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time in the company's ten year history, SD Bullion reaches $1 Billion of sales in a full calendar year. Overall, the company has totaled more than $3 Billion in sales catapulting them near the top of most successful online bullion dealers.

"2022 was an exciting year for us. It was our first full year in our new 40,000 square foot facility. We finally had the space we needed to really scale and grow and take care of our customers," an elated Founder, Dr. Tyler Wall explained.

Some of the company's highlights include being named to Inc. Magazine's list of fastest growing companies for the fourth time in six years with a reported 336% three year growth rate.

To read more, go here. 

Another Record Set In November For Gun Sales

Above, an Albuquerque, New Mexico gun store. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Guns are still flying off the shelves in gun stores around the country. This has been the case this past year and November set another record in gun sales.

Bearing Arms reported:

The Great Gun Run of 2020 continued at a record-setting pace in November, according to new analysis from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The firearms industry trade group estimates that over the course of the past month there were 1,949,141 background checks performed on gun sales; a whopping 45.2% increase over November of 2019 and the most guns sales ever in the month of November.

The NSSF reports that, to date, there’ve been 19.1 million background checks conducted on gun sales in 2020, shattering the previous record high of 15.7 million NICS checks on gun sales in 2016. The number of new gun owners also continues to increase, according to the NSSF, with an estimated 7.7-million Americans picking up a firearm for the first time so far this year.

To read more, go here.