Having perused the Virtual Systems here, I suspect my collection to be quite modest compared to many residing here. About 1600 albums.
So just how much vinyl do YOU own?
Let's hear some numbers!
And when do you think you might have enough to last your lifetime?
Or is it like horsepower ... Too much is never enough!
Do you have regular clearouts or just keep adding until the floorboards start to creak!
All just for fun people!
And when do you think you might have enough to last your lifetime?
Or is it like horsepower ... Too much is never enough!
Do you have regular clearouts or just keep adding until the floorboards start to creak!
All just for fun people!
116 responses Add your response
+/- 7,000. Been collecting since 1962. The collection is mostly jazz and classical with some rock and other stuff. I've curtailed my buying quite a bit the last few years and have started giving some of my dupes away. Soon I'll start selling the more valuable items, here and/or eBay. As someone once (or twice or thrice) said, you can't take it with you. |
My collection almost doubled in one day! A high school friend donated a very large number of lps to a local college. They were placed in the library in old school fashion, pockets and checkout cards glued to the jackets. Judging by the cards they were seldom borrowed. Years later, the school no longer wanted to maintain them and since he was the largest donor he had first dibs. He knew I was collecting, called me and I scored big time. Thousands of records. $0 Lucky me. |
@tomic601 - Thanks. Personally, I don't see a reason to have records I know I will never listen to again. I take the opportunity to trade them toward records I will enjoy, hopefully for years to come. I guess I'm less of a collector and more of a consumer of music media. I'm not knocking collectors. It's just not my thing. |
I only started getting back in to vinyl in a big way around two years ago, with it really ramping up this year (once I discovered discogs). I'm using discogs to organize my collection. Says I have 423 in there, but I haven't finished cataloguing some of my old records. My attitude is that I do not want to end up being a hoarder, where I'm just overrun with records that I'll never listen to. I don't "collect" in the sense of buying records only for some other sense of "value" (e.g. this one was released with a wonky label, only a few made!), or rarity, or just for completion sake. I'm looking to have a managable number of well curated records, buying only the records I will listen to (and not for just a song or two, but most of the record has to appeal). That's why I don't do much crate-digging at all. I don't like hauling vinyl home just to take a chance on it, and then ending up with records I don't listen to. Discogs...and youtube...allow me to listen to lots of tracks from an album before I buy. But...I have to say I went vinyl crazy for a while, started buying too much, and have nipped it back to a sane number of records...for now...I hope... |
I just purchased a turntable a week ago and now have 7 records (new and used). My intent is to acquire music not currently in my digital library. I'm pretty happy with my digital so, hopefully, I can keep a handle on those "I need to hear this on vinyl" urges which are sure to come. So far I'm really enjoying the experience. |
Glad to see there are some fellow "non hoarders" among the brethren. I agree that if I buy an album, play it and find it was not to my liking and am likely to never play it again then there is just no point in keeping it just for the sake of it. So usually on eBay it goes. I have my existing storage bins and they are not quite full yet so I consider myself "safe" for now … lol |
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Greg I have the same thoughts at times but I am an addict to music as well. I stream, play cd and sacd, play cassette tape, play r2r tape Oh and vinyl too. For me it is related to mood as well, sometimes I just cant be bothered to handle media, other times I am glad I have so much physical media to choose from and handle. |
Prof. I admire your dedication and managing to catalog them through Discogs. It has been on my to-do list ever since an older thread of mine asking how people catalog and sort their vinyl. However meaning to do it and actually summoning up the enthusiasm and motivation to do so are completely different animals! |
I think Elizabeth’s post is rather sad. I know vinyl is not for everyone and not forever, but her peak number shows that she was really into it at one time. I understand that circumstances change, but calling all that classical worthless junk and just data is too much for me to ignore. There is a lot of hassle with a large collection, but we do it for the love of it. Or not. |
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I have acquired about 1,200 albums and about 1,000 CDs and this is after 55 years of collecting and constant culling to keep my collection at what I consider a manageable number. With this all said I am a vinyl guy and most the CDs are duplicates of favorite a!buns or things that aren't available on vinyl. Enjoy the music. |
I live in a record store period,started collecting in the 60's. I stopped counting when I went over 15,000 and 3 weeks ago I was buying something at Bob's market in Santa Monica and while paying the cashier I looked over to the spot where I bought my first LP Introducing The Beatles on Vee Jay records. I have albums I haven't heard since buying them but my hope is to donate them to a Music College Dept. when I pass. My collection is diverse running the gambit from rnr,classical,blues and jazz. |
Nice reply Lizzy. You have a wonderful way with words. I am your age and I have thrown out quite a few Mitch and Christmas albums. I understand much of what you are saying. The same goes for our furniture, clothiing and other personal stuff when we die. Why worry about it? Now admit it. Confess. You love records! You know you do. |
Found this conversation just an hour ago pretty interesting and actually very much along the lines of Elizabeths reasoning. Just visited my LRS ( good boy today , just 3 albums and 5 tapes) Talking with the owner about his overflowing store resulted in him telling me that they have so many records he has had to rent 4 more storage units. Then he said he is paying somebody full time 10 hours a day to sort through them and toss out all the chaffe. Reasoning is that why should he have boxes full of stuff that will unfortunately never sell even at 50 cents when he can have boxes of $10 plus records for sale. So he confided he had just sent a complete van full of vinyl, about 3 thousand records his guess ,straight to Goodwill with many more to follow. Sad but true. My mother would love all the Perry Como and Andy Williams records being tossed though! |
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Elizabeth My LRS buys complete collections and unfortunately that may include some dross. So no they are not deliberately buying junk records. More likely a complete collection similar to yours at the onset. Then they cull the chaffe just as you did and send them onto another world. A lot of the collections they buy its take all or nothing. This guy likely has the largest selection in Florida for sale. |
and then there's this guy from Brazil, with 6 million LPs: https://thevinylfactory.com/features/inside-the-worlds-biggest-record-collection-an-interview-with-zero-freitas/ |
Talking of Goodwill, I just stopped in one, have not been inside one for years ever since I found out how much their CEO writes himself a check for... Google it, pretty shocking compare to say The Salvation Army CEO. Anyhoo! Guess they must still be working through Liz and my LRS castoffs! 10 albums for $2! I bought a bunch of classical pieces and one Sting album as I swallowed my pride. |
@uberwaltz I know what you mean about trying to get around to cataloguing in discogs. I’m lazy about that stuff, so being a real record collector would never work for me. The easy part was that I was buying from discogs! So every time an album showed up all I had to do is click a button on discogs and it was added to my collection. So the initial cataloguing was super fast and easy. The only bummer is all the old non-discog vinyl I have around, which does take looking up the info on discogs, so more work per album.I’m still getting through that because once I have it done, the vast majority of any new vinyl I buy will be easy to add. I’ve learned from my movie collection. When I started with DVDs and later Blu-Rays, I bought tons of movies...both movies I knew I loved and marginal ones I thought "nice to have on hand if I ever get the urge."As I was really bad at returning movies on time to rental stores, it worked better for me to essentially build a large selection of movies at home so any likely urge for a movie could be satisfied by having it at my finger tips. That felt cool for a while. But now...I just have tons of movies that I’ve watched once, or haven’t watched, and will likely not watch again. In a way it feels less "wow" to have more movies than I’ll ever watch and bit more "depressing" that I have so many movies taking up space that I’ll never watch. Again, if someone is strictly in to the collecting aspect, then the sheer ownership itself satisfies to some degree. But if one is more centered on owning movies/music to actually use it, then the urge to curate and cull the collection kicks in. |
Prof. My movie collection is along similar lines and although I am not depressed by it yet, it certainly still takes up a lot of space. If we stood back and was brutally realistic we do not need any of this physical media at all and I sometimes feel envious of those who can dispense with the physical aspect of it. I often picture a nice little streaming amp and pair of speakers and nothing more. No piles of tapes, records, CDs, essential tape and vinyl care products. No movies. All movies and music available at the press of a couple of buttons on a remote and smartphone or tablet. Then I look around at what I actually have and the "rituals"involved and think what a bleak, sterile and dystopian future that really would be. ( apologies for the Clearthink trifecta there!). |
uberwaltz Well, since I, like many here, actually have access to both "lifestyles" - I have a convenient digital streaming set up and a vinyl set up - I already know the result of the experiment. I am getting much more pleasure out of my vinyl these days than my digital. As physical artifacts, few of my DVDs or Blu-Rays ever gave much satisfaction. Like CDs they were mostly carriers for the content and that was it. So long as CDs and DVDs/Blu-Rays were carriers for the best quality content, they were necessary. But as soon as full CD-quality ripping/streaming became available, the rational for the physical copies mostly disappeared for me. Similarly, the quality of streaming movies has become really excellent and offers "the world of movies at my fingertips" just as I was trying to create at home. So I don't need those physical copies so much anymore. Vinyl is a physical object that I enjoy holding and owning. It also means I get to use a turntable, and I LOVE nice turntable - my turntable is a pleasing combination of aesthetically and conceptually satisfying.It's just cool to look at and use. Then there is the fact that vinyl just sounds different, and often to me preferable, to digital. So for my vinyl offers something that CDs and DVDs/Blu-Rays and digital streaming don't offer. They are features I actually enjoy and MISS from those formats, so I don't really pine for a scenario in which I only use streaming. |