New to vinyl, which turntable, etc?

Before you jump in, give some thought to the availablity of software (i.e. LP's) Do you already have a collection or were you planning on building one? I have recently re-entered the vinyl world starting with only about 50 albums I had frommy college and post college days in the 70's. I have since purchased a few 100 more but it hasn't been easy to find good Jazz material - which is what I like.
The garage sale stuff for 50 cents a record is worth about that much IMHO.I would rather have a new CD than someone's old brutalized vinyl. New vinyl is great but difficult to find. Somenew vinylis also "digitally remastered" so you might as well have the cd.
Check the following sites first to see how much there actually is that you want.
www.redtrumpet.com
www.amusicdirect.com
www.acousticsounds.com
www.gemm.com
P.S. I have a Michell Gyro SE Mk2,Origen live silver arm and shelter 501 cartridge which cost me 2300 new shopping carefully and is out of your price range. I prevously had a Rega planar 3 with Grado gold cartridge for $700 which I got to see if still I liked vinyl. While it couldn't perform like my current setup, it was great for the price and I resold it at little loss.

Dekay

I agree that if you can find the good LP's they are great. Unfortunately, in my experience, most people had crummy systems that did serious harm to the LP's I have purchased many a used LP that looked pristine to the eye only to find upon playing that the peaks seam to be rounded out leading to a lack of good clean sound on the high end or in loud passages. This is probably the result of a record that was well cared for physically (i.e. not scratched and mauled like so many I see) but just played too often on an inferior system. I would rather just have the CD than this.

It sounds from the posts on Audiogon that the West Coast is a better place than East to purchase used vinyl. I purchase most of mine through GEMM. They have dealers from all over the world but I have noticed that many of the things I have purchased have come from the West coast. My favorite used classic Jazz source on the East Coast is The Jazz Record Center in NY www.jazzrecordcenter.com They have tons of great stuff but it ain't cheap. Where do you shop?