Gee your vinyl records must be real junk if you’re worried about them being a "burden" to your survivors. My family is already fighting over who gets first pick when I kick the bucket.
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
Most of us old music lover audiophiles have large record collections. I still have my Father's pre recorded tapes. He had a wonderful old tube Ampex back then. I never counted. I always got rid of albums that were either poor pressings or music I did not like for some reason but back then you had to be reasonably good to get a recording contract. Sometimes I bought an album simply because I liked the cover. You can't do that anymore because there is so much garbage out there. Fortunately it is becoming easier to audition music online. Having a large collection is fun because you can always pull a record that you have not listened to for years so it is almost like playing new record. Also records have memories attached to them and you can bring those memories back by listening like when my first girlfriend dumped me or the first time I played Meet the Beatles on my Zenith portable with a cobra tonearm. I can smell the tubes. When you make a significant upgrade to your system like a new set of speakers or a much more powerful amp it is almost like having an entirely new collection. Music is eternal all this other stuff not. |
In my opinion...not nearly enough. In my wife's opinion...way too many! But seriously, I have more records than I reasonably have room to store. I haven't counted but I think it's around 700-800 currently. I'm trying to reduce the number by selling on Discogs and ebay, but it's not making much of a dent. I recently got rid of all of my "junk" vinyl that was simply taking up space. Just about everything I own now would qualify as premium quality vinyl. I made a choice a few years ago to only keep the records that I love, and not be a "collector". Still trying to stay on this path. I don't want my stuff to be a burden on my family when I'm gone. I also want them to know that they shouldn't give the stuff away if they ever have to make that choice for me. |
According to Discogs I just broke 2000 LPs. I have another 500 or so I just culled (doubles, stuff I don’t like, bulk purchase dross) that I will off-load at the flea market for $1 and spend the money on more records. I heartily agree with Elizabeth. No sense leaving your records around to weigh down your survivors. Several times I have visited my parents in their 55+ community to find hundreds of records in their basement that were dropped off by their neighbors kids because my mom told them I like records...I cull through looking for the stuff I like and immediately take the rest to Goodwill. I have considered establishing a Southern Maryland Vinyl Tontine. Each member agrees to help the deceased’s family liquidate the collection as efficiently as possible. When my time comes around I hope to have culled my collection down to my favorite 1000 LPs. But as someone once wrote on one of these forums, I hope at my funeral my friends sing an old classic song that hasn’t been written yet. |
bdp24 - Wow that is amazing, to grow up in San Jose in that era! I’m jealous, hearing about all the incredible garage bands you saw in the mid ’60s. I met Greg and Suzy Shaw in 1977 when I visited their home in Los Angeles, and he showed me his record collection and spent the whole day with them discussing music. He released a 45 I made with my band, on his Voxx label. I love the Sonics (Tacoma WA) too. And the Music Machine. And the Lyres. Here is a shot I took just now showing some of the ’60s garage 45s (and a few LPs) I have in my collection, all from San Jose (except Music Machine). Maybe you even saw some of the more obscure bands, as support acts for the more well-known bands? http://www.g45central.com/posts/SanJose.jpg |
400-500 hundred? All good quality, many rare. Mostly Jazz and classical. Smaller section with some rock, blues, world. My source material is vinyl or hi-rez streaming. I see no reason to have vinyl of much of the new electronic music—of it was made digitally, I will replay it digitally. One of my weird little lps is a transcription from Edison waxes. Even though that is available streamed, I find it droll to go from one extinct medium to another that was on life support and is now resurrected. And I have some emotional connection to records that were my dad’s. But for the most point, I don’t fetishize vinyl. I just love beautiful music reproduced nicely. |
Hey @whostolethebatmobile, it sounds like you may be hip to Greg Shaw. If not, he was the first Rock music critic to start (in the late-60’s!) a fanzine devoted to Garage, which he named Bomp Magazine. He also started a record label (also named Bomp), and was for a while The Flamin’ Groovies manager. His office/warehouse was in Burbank, where I visited him a lot in the 80’s-90’s, buying Garage/Punk/import 45’s (my collection of 7" 45’s numbers somewhere around 750-800). Shaw’s primary musical interest was Garage, about which he was an expert (he wrote the liner notes for a lot of Garage/Punk compilation albums). In 2004 he died suddenly at age 55 of a cardiac arrest, leaving behind a massive collection of Garage Band 45’s, estimated to number about 100,000! I grew up in San Jose in the 60's, and if you are as into Garage as I think you are, you know what that means: as a teenager I saw perform live The Chocolate Watchband (seen in the Roger Corman movie Riot On Sunset Strip. The Watchband’s drummer went to my High School), The Otherside, The Syndicate Of Sound ("Little Girl"), The Trolls/Stained Glass (two albums on Capitol Records, no hits), People ("I Love You"), and all the other San Jose Garage Bands you’ve read about. I somehow managed to miss The Count Five (of "Psychotic Reaction" fame). I also saw The Music Machine ("Talk Talk". They were great!) and other national acts when they came through on tour. San Jose is considered by Rock ’n’ Roll historians to be Ground Zero for Garage, with at least one band on every suburban block! I love The Sonics to death, and saw the reformed line-up about ten years ago. But my favorite Garage Band of them all is The Lyres. I saw them at Club Lingerie on Sunset Blvd. in the 1980’s, and almost lost my mind. They’re real good on record, but insanely great live. Monoman (Jeff Conolly) plays his Vox Continental organ with one hand, and a tambourine with the other. He is a man possessed! |
Batmobile I think you are the first to even mention the little 7" varmits!.At least I assume you mean the 7 inch by the dates, could be 12 inch ones as well? I used to have about 4 boxes of them but it is bad enough getting up to change sides once every 20 minutes never mind every 3 to 5 minutes. But I do see the used 45 market is very healthy for good collectible ones. |
I've been collecting records since high school. Started out with jazz and rhythm and blues. As the audio disease set in, back in the early '70s, my musical taste expanded and the collection grew. Now, if I were to make a rough estimate, I'd say the collection consists of 7000 LP's and maybe 2000 CDs. Since the collecting started back in the middle 1950s and was mostly jazz, I have some fantastic collectible albums. Lots of early mono jazz records that could sell on Ebay for good money. After the musical taste expanded, I started collecting classical and even good easy-listening music, some of which, are truly great sounding. Demo quality actually. I've recommended a few of them in these forums. I'd like to thank all members who have or are currently, donating their CDs to the thrift stores. Its turned into a heyday much as we had with vinyl when CDs first came on the scene. With a high-resolution system, properly recorded CDs can sound fantastic. Frank |
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. |
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 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. |
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. |
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/ |
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. |
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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! |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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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. |
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! |
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. |
