Cassettes make a comeback! Have you bought one in all these albums on tape now value lots of of kilos?

The cassette tape is making a comeback with prices of recent albums sold in the retro format as much as quadrupling in value within weeks of release.

And as a new generation chases rare cassettes, classic albums on tape are also trading hands for big money.

In an age of streaming, the boom is being driven by nostalgia for the 1980s and wanting to own a physical asset. More than half of Britons have bought a physical media item in the past year – spending an average of £273.80, Gumtree data found.

Here we reveal the new tape selling for 2,627pc more than its original value and some of the old classics worth searching for in the loft…

Modern artists drive boom

Stars such as Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar and Lana Del Rey routinely issue tapes alongside vinyl and digital options when releasing new albums.

This has created a resurgence of interest in the once near-extinct format, research by music consultancy Startle suggests.

Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl came out in October with cassettes costing £17. They quickly sold out and are now changing hands for an average of £63 on Ebay – a 269pc increase.

Lamar’s 2017 album Damn sold for £12 on cassette on release and now goes for £82, while Del Rey’s 2019 album Norman F***ing Rockwell originally cost £15 but now sells for an average of £188.

More lucrative recent cassette investments include US country singer Morgan Wallen. His 2021 album Dangerous cost £22 on tape when it was first released – now you’ll pay as much as £250.

But trumping them all is Lady Gaga’s album Mayhem. It cost £11 when it came out in March but now changes hands for as much as £300 – a 2,627pc rise.

The price of cassettes is rising not just due to demand but because they are often issued in limited numbers – usually between 2,000 and 20,000 – which increases their collectable appeal.

A market fuelled by nostalgia for the 80s

Until recently tapes were considered outdated and the poor relation to CDs and vinyl, but that has dramatically changed.

‘Sales are largely being driven by a nostalgia for cassette tapes from a new generation of music fans not alive when they were being sold alongside vinyl – long before CDs and music streaming,’ says Startle chief executive Adam Castleton. ‘The appeal is it offers a chance to not only listen to music on a different format, but own a physical copy to support a favourite artist.’

Generation Z fans, those born between 1997 and 2012, are the biggest purchasers, with 60pc of this group saying they would like to have lived in the 1980s, according to a recent poll.

And gadgets of the era are also booming in popularity, including the portable Sony Walkman and retro stereos.

Recent BBC drama Mixtape – which was set in Sheffield in the late 1980s – saw the main characters bond over their love of music, while the just-released series of Netflix hit show Stranger Things has a pivotal scene involving a main character listening to a cassette tape of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.

Alex Tadros, owner of Mars Tapes in Manchester, the last music cassette shop in Britain, says: ‘The average age of our customers is under 30. They never had the opportunity to buy cassettes before and enjoy the physical aspect of playing tapes. It feels great being able to hold your music in your hand and pop them into a playing machine.

‘One of the problems with streaming is that although it might be easier to access music from your smartphone, it is also more likely you will be distracted by it.

‘You won’t get that with an old-fashioned tape recorder.’

Get your vintage cassettes valued

The first compact-sized cassette tapes were introduced in 1963, and it became one of the most popular formats between 1983 and 1991 for both singles and albums.

But many music fans threw out old tapes when replacing them with CDs in the 1990s, and there was another wave of cassette clear-outs around the rise of online music streaming in the 2000s.

Tadros says: ‘Find an old Beatles cassette for an album such as Abbey Road and it is worth £150. But demand is strongest for music from the late 1970s through to the 1990s, when the cassette format was still king.’

Hip hop and alternative rock genres are particularly popular. For example, a good version of the 1996 album Endtroducing by DJ Shadow might cost you £250. Or a 1980 cassette by Joy Division of their album Unknown Pleasures costs £120. Both were less than a fiver when new.

Cassettes by rock bands such as Black Sabbath, Linkin Park, Metallica, Nirvana and Pink Floyd are also highly collectable.

If you have boxes of cassettes in the attic or back of the garage, you might find a treasure trove that can be valued on the trading website Discogs. Tap in the details for an average price the cassettes sell for. They can be bought and sold on Discogs, or trading websites such as Ebay and Facebook Marketplace. Highlight imperfections and ideally play it beforehand to make sure it is still in good order.

Tadros points out that, as with other collectables, condition is key. Old plastic cassette casing often cracks, but can be easily replaced, whereas having the irreplaceable original inner sleeve more than doubles the value.

The tape itself can snap if mishandled – and this makes it worthless as a collectable investment.

Cassettes can also wear out – though it might not start until at least 200 plays. The magnetic strip that holds music information is delicate and can degrade due to heat, humidity and playing.

Should you invest in a Walkman?

Retro equipment to play cassettes can also be highly sought after – but won’t have proved a good long-term investment.

For example, you can pay as much as £300 for a late 1980s Sony Sports WM-BF58 Walkman – a robust yellow model that also has a radio – if still in original condition. However, it was expensive when new in 1988, selling for about £100. Taking inflation into account, this is the equivalent of £280 today. Mars Tapes sells new cassette players for £45.

Soaring sales… but still a niche market

Over the past decade the market for tape sales has rocketed by more than 1,700pc – but, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), just one in every 2,000 album sales last year was in that format.

From a low point of less than 4,000 sales in 2012, it peaked at 195,000 in 2022, but dipped back to 107,000 last year – still a drop in the ocean compared to music sales in other formats. Last year the equivalent of 178 million albums were streamed online, while 10.5 million CDs, 6.7 million vinyl LPs and 3.3 million digital albums were bought in Britain.

A BPI spokesman says: ‘Cassettes were a rite of passage as we listened to our favourite artists. It is heartening that this once much-loved format is back in vogue.’

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