Why Do You Still Have Vinyl if You Don't Play it?

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Basically, this whole thing comes down to convenience. A lot of the LP's that I own, I only want to hear one or two tracks sometime. Sorry, but I'm just not going to go through that ritual for one track. Over the years, I've gotten cd copies of everything in my LP collection that was issued on cd. Of course a good number of those items were never issued on cd. About 90% of the vinyl that I don't have a cd copy of can be heard on Rhapsody.

To satisfy my need for convenience and to keep my vinyl, periodically I try to talk myself into getting a reel-to-reel and move my favorites to tape. But the cost of a good machine and the cost of enough new tape make me hesitant.

Rhapsody, Pandora, a good cd player, Squeezebox and a hard-drive are making it almost impossible to justify playing LP's. The sound quality of all of it sounds good to me and I'm done splitting hairs about what sounds absolutely the best. The thing for me these days is instant access.

I have a retired cousin in Florida that has just as many LP's as I do. I went into the room where he kept them and it seems like there was an inch of dust on the shelves. It was clear that he hasn't played his LP's in years either. But of course he's adamant about keeping his LP collection.

What is this obsession with holding on to these things?

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Launche....well said.
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I also offered the records to my 21 year-old daughter. She was nearly offended by my offer. Too low-tech for her and she isn't that thrilled about jazz. Besides, she doesn't have the space in her apt. If I gave them away, I'd like them to go to a place where I could at least 'visit' them every now and then.

My 14 year-old son is a violinist entering his freshman year at a performing arts high school in LA. He also plays guitar. There is a guy that lives in my building that buys up vinyl collections. I've bought several LP's from him over the years. I'll get him to teach my son and I how to grade them. Then I'll let my son sell them here or on eBay. It will be a great project for my son to teach him how to earn a few bucks. Most of my LP's are jazz. I'll let him keep all of the proceeds from the sale to buy himself a nicer violin. I'm sure during the process he's going to have lots of questions about the artists as he's cataloging them and preparing them for sale. He should easily get $3k for the whole kit and caboodle after it's all said and done. $3k should get him a pretty nice violin.
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Mark, you may have something there. I remember when the first iMac came out, it didn't have a floppy drive. It was the first computer to omit a floppy drive. Well, that was just unheard of. The next few desktops that I owned, I made sure that they were configured with a floppy drive. Never mind that no one was using floppy disks any longer....I wanted one on my machine "just in case". I kept getting floppy drives on my machines until I was told "um, sir, we don't do that anymore". Same thing with a land line in my home. Several years ago a co-worker mentioned that he had gotten rid of his land line and was using his cell phone as his only telephone. That was blasphemy! How can you not have a phone in your home? I woke up several years later and noticed that I rarely used my home phone because everyone in the house had their own cell phone. I also looked at how AT&T was socking it to me every month for the bill for the land line that I never used. I got rid of my land line and have never missed it. In hindsight, I should have dropped the land line years ago.
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Just to put everyone back on track again with the original post. I was asking why do you still have vinyl if you DON'T PLAY IT. The intent of the post was intended for those who have pretty much given up on vinyl and play digital 99% of the time. The argument about whether one format is superior to the other has no place in this thread. Also, if you are still playing a lot of vinyl and prefer playing vinyl over digital, this thread is not intended for you. So please, no more posts here about how great vinyl is, this thread is for those of us that have left vinyl and have moved on.

Again, I have TWO TURNTABLES and spend more time dusting them off and keeping them clean than I do playing them. So, I already know how good vinyl is, I have 3,000 LP's to remind me....that was never the point.

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1.)I’m lazy: I don't want to lose any of the music, but don't want to take the time to transfer it.
2.) I'm cheap: I don't want to buy the hardware necessary to do the transferring properly.
3.) Even if 1 and 2 were not factors, I'd still worry about losing the transferred content -- both physically, and/or to some as-yet-unrecognized form of 'digital' deterioration'.
4.) And, as others have mentioned, my not wanting to give up (or have to transfer) that (sometimes great) cover art and liner notes -- which I still enjoy reading or re-reading.

Nsgarch, your four points are dead-on. I guess I just
didn't want to face it or admit it. I don't know what it's
going to take for me to let go.
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I waited too long to sell the film camera. I couldn't give it away.
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The lenses might be worth something. I can't see much value in the camera body. The lenses from my Canon film slr work beautifully with my digital slr.
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