a sound investment

I've always been puzzled by people who "invest" in gold because the cost of gold is so "stable."    What on earth —– my only memory of the price of gold is precisely how *volatile* it is (remember I turned 10 in 1977).    Over the years it's gone up and down like mad.    There's no guarantee there at all.

To the contrary, my advice to anyone looking to put your money into something whose value is stabler than money:   buy really good microphones.    They absolutely don't budge.    Age to age.

Of course, as a friend points out, really nothing is stable.    (How would that even be measured, since everything needs to be valued relative to something else.)

But even apart from your Neumann u-87s (a roughly $3k mic), you could even buy mid-good mics.    Sennheiser 421s, the Volvo of mics, will cost you something like $300, whether new, used, old, vintage, refurbished, what have you.    It just doesn't change in value.    Go up the scale to, say, a Telefunken 251, at $9k —– same thing.    Remarkably stable (so far as it goes).

MIC COLLECTION PHOTO CREDIT: svenskagrammofonstudion