Welcome to Bass Hangout! We just launched this site, so pardon any dust...please contact the webmaster (Eric Schlange) at eric@basshangout.com with any questions or comments.
There are a lot of fine playing and sounding basses out there in many various shapes and colors that would make excellent basses to use for either playing on stage or use in the recording studio. Your best bet is hit some local music stores and play everything you can get your hands on. Pretty soon you will begin to get a feeling of what you like and dislike about the various brands and models. Once I find an instrument that I like playing, I tend to use it all the time and never consider selling it; so collector value has little meaning for me.