For some unknown reason, many of my friends believed the hype about how vinyl was for the Dodos and everyone should embrace digital. To my good fortune, several of them approached me to see if I would offer a good home for their vinyl collections and I was only too happy to oblige ! One friend had been a university professor who taught a course on Jazz. He was delighted to pass along hundreds of his demonstration discs ---- I did NOT protest. Another friend simply wanted to divest themselves of their vinyl collections and I, once again, did not protest. When all was said and done I had amassed a collection that even surprised me !
A friend who had a couple of annoying youngsters staying with him and his wife decided that an excellent way of keeping them out of his hair was to pay them a stipend to count his vinyl collection and report the sum to him. I thought it was a great idea but had no irritating youngsters to do the job so I devised a "quick and dirty" way to accomplish the same result. I measured how many LPs occupied a foot of space and then measured all of my record shelves. One foot would hold 75 standard LPs. When I concluded my inventory I had somewhere around 12,000 vinyl discs ! I figured that boxed sets counted a bit high for their content, but otherwise the figure seemed correct. Have I listened to every one of them ? No --- definitely No. But just to realize that I'd rescued thousands of recordings from probable oblivion was enough of a reward for me. I really enjoy that they are there to be accessed and enjoyed whenever I wish. I know that a similar collection of music can be accessed through multiple streaming apps but there IS a difference. Those with a vinyl passion know exactly what I'm talking about ! Whether you are a collector with a mission of saving these amazing artifacts or even a collector with the mission of making a quick buck from your interaction, you both have a role in saving the destruction of of these precious links to another era. Keep those discs spinning !!