What's Worth More on the Open Market - Your Records or Your Audio Gear

@jab interesting comment. Obviously no appreciation of the music industry and its roots. Why are so many artists still releasing on vinyl then? You shouldn’t even be on this forum IMO.

Don't tell your family to hold their breath for a big cash windfall.
Our LP collections are not worth what we think they should be.Never will be. Same goes for the audio gear. A very small(and shrinking) group of buyers will always be around, but like ANYTHING, its a niche market.

You"re at the mercy of the buyer, who is in the drivers seat.

Those people finding out they have an AMAZING piece of something on the Antiques Roadshow, experience the same realization.
An unsealed, Brit Parlophone Beatles, Blue Note,RCA etc...are not going to put your kids through college, or make a house down payment. It may help a little bit, but that's about it.

Best to instill the sentimental value with your family, and enjoy them.

A friend just sold his LP collection, around 2000 LPs, for $20,000. I was flabbergasted that the selling price was so high.  However, his system easily cost more than $100K.  Assuming he can re-sell his gear for ~$60K (60% of retail), the system is nevertheless worth more than the LPs.  But if he had owned e.g. 10,000 LPs, and if he'd been able to sell at a similar per LP price, we would have a different answer. The question is really silly, because it is so dependent upon each individual's LPs and/or gear.

imho, with some obvious exceptions (original blue note, parlophone beatles, etc.), the value of record collections is very small.  Also, the time and effort required to sell them is enormous: inspecting, grading, listing, 
packing, shipping, correspondence, returns, and so on.  As others have noted, anything other than mint condition stuff is usually virtually worthless, and the market continues to shrink, as audiophiledom dies off.

If you live much longer, your heirs will be streaming everything and will have no idea why anyone would possess thousands of pounds of discs that take up so much space.  What will happen is that your heirs will sell them en masse, at pennies on the dollar, to a record seller, to get rid of them. They will not educate themselves and go to the effort to sell them individually.  I won't even do that myself; life is too short.

Some categories are essentially unsellable, e.g., opera.  After repeatedly trying to sell my collection (about 1000 mint discs) and receiving no interest at all, I eventually gave them away for almost nothing.  In retrospect, I should have just donated them to the local opera society.

As much as most old gear depreciates (again, with exceptions, e.g. Mac,AR) it still tends to have some residual value if it is in nearly pristine shape.   I recently took several pieces to Goodwill (MIT tube terminator cables, a fine but 30-year-old DB Systems preamp). how much effort is it worth to get a few hundred bucks for something?  Not much. You'd be  lucky to be working for $10 an hour - if you find a buyer.

I wouldn't invest much in reissues, except for things you just have to have. Most don't sound very good and will not ever sell for anything near their original price.

I've been getting rid of records for years.  I've only got 600-700 left.  They are probably close to worthless.
I still find myself buying cds in spite of subscribing to two streaming services.  For the past year I've had the thought that each cd I buy is another object my kids will have to dispose of when I die. 

My kids are not into owning music.