Wow. I certainly have thought about this a lot. I have met a few record hoarders, and I think there are two distinct types: those who buy records, and those who buy “stuff”. I met one of each type just before the pandemic hit, and each let me to a decision.
I met a guy who was a verifiable hoarder, like out of the TV show. He was sued by the local county for hoarding and told to clean up his stuff. He retaliated by putting up an “Antique Shoppe” sign in front of his house. (To be fair, he did have some nice stuff…). He had, by my estimation, about 25,000 records in his basement. They were all in piles about 7 feet high, about 35-40 piles that I could see all throughout the basement. I could only access about ten piles, and at that down to only a couple feet before each pile became unstable. The mold stench was almost overpowering, and I could see some water damage on many or the sleeves. I only found two records that I was interested in before I had had enough, and they were both local singers that my dad grew up with (Dick Curless - “A Tombstone Every Mile” and Hal “Lone Pine” - “Sings His Favorites”
The second guy was someone I knew from record buying; he and I would often run into each other and chat at the flea markets and record stalls. He had a stroke and died, and his wife called a few of his record acquaintances to help sort out the house. There were about 5,000 records in the basement, neatly boxed by genre (more or less). Then the widow says, “There’s more in the garage, and we haven’t touched the trailer yet…”. More records than he could ever listen to. Definitely a hoarder.
But those two situations affected me. The first hoarder was stuck in an unhealthy, dangerous situation. He was under legal threat. His hoarder mentality had completely taken over his life.
The second hoarder situation was worse, in my opinion. The hoarders widow was left to clean up. She had to deal with thousands of (some extremely valuable) records while mourning, clean up a house and sell so she could move on. She was overwhelmed. I did not have as many records (at the time, 2600 or so), but I was trending in that direction. I suddenly realized I did not want to put my wife in that situation.
A couple months later my wife got a new job with increased responsibilities, and we decided to move into the city to be closer to her work. We would have to make due with a much smaller space until she retired in a couple years. I sold my records to a few shops I had dealt with (the week before Record Store Day 2019, as it turned out), got rid of my equipment and bought a streamer.
The pandemic upended our plan to move; my wife’s new job became WFH and we decided to hunker down until things blew over. But during all this, I had space and music in my man cave. I used the money I got from selling my record collection to upgrade my equipment (Zu DWs), and get a really nice ergonomic Stressless chair, as well as spoil the grandkids and wife.
I am extremely happy with my decision to avoid being a hoarder. Of course, YMMV.