Vinyl Obsession: The World’s Largest Private Music Archive
Retro thing, an independent vintage gadget website “run by a team of renegade elves based in Calgary and Chicago” has a very interesting 8 minute documentary videoon their site about a chap called Paul Mawhinney who owns the largest collection of vintage vinyl in the world - more than three million records.
As a young man, Paul was a travelling salesman and started buying and trading records across the United States. Eventually his collection took up so much space that his wife issued an ultimatum: either open a Record shop or get rid of them. So he opened a record shop. He then decided to archive the last copy of every record he stocked, and over the decades, his library grew and grew.
Now pushing 70 and with his health failing, Paul wants to sell the archive. According to an audit by the Library of Congress, more than 80% of the collection from 1949 - 1966 has never been reissued and is currently unavailable to the public. The collection is valued at almost $50 million. Paul wants just $3 million.
But no one wants to buy it. He’s even tried to eBay it, but that fell through.
I can’t understand this. Surely the mega-billionaires who made their money off popular music - like David Geffen or Jann Wenner, or Elvis Presley’s Graceland Museum, or - dammit - failing which The British Museum if the Americans don’t want o save it - could come up with the $3 million? Jesus, that’s less than $1 a record. You couldn’t buy the last Spice Girls’ record for that, let alone the first flat record ever pressed (which the archive has) or an unreleased Stone LP from the late 60s.
As a small-time record collecting nut myself, I’m simply baffled by the lack of interest.
Paul has set up a website to provide more information about the collection. Here he explains what he hopes a new owner, should one be found, will do with it.
The History of American music belongs in a museum or a library; a place where people who love music and have an interest in history and popular American culture can look, listen, touch, read and appreciate this legacy for future generations. It could be part of a stand-alone music museum, a major exhibit in an existing museum, or the basis of a university music library. Cleverly arranged and displayed, and surrounded by additional cultural memorabilia, the collection could even become a tourist attraction.
Although, as the new owner, you are free to do as you please with the collection, We’d love to find a buyer who will keep the collection intact (other than to sell duplicate copies, if so desired) and to keep the music alive for the enjoyment and music lovers, now and for years to come.
If you represent a museum, library, university, or charitable foundation, or you’re a philanthropist interested in purchasing the collection and donating it, please contact the owner’s representatives for more information, pricing and a personal on-site inspection.
Come on, somewhere out there must be a music lover with as much money as sense (and a large basement) who can give Paul his pension and take over the management of this world treasure.
Comments
| 18 September, 2008, 1:44 pm |
Given the percentage of new hits that are re-recordings of old hits, I’d have thought that a sensible music company would want to bleed this resource dry.
| 18 September, 2008, 1:48 pm |
I read about this when he first put it on eBay, and was staggered that there was no real interest. The collection is and essential document of twentieth century popular culture, and I know if I had $3 million (not £3 million) I would buy this collection without so much as blinking; which is almost certainly why I don’t have $3 million.
| 18 September, 2008, 2:05 pm |
“I know if I had $3 million (not £3 million) I would buy this collection without so much as blinking; which is almost certainly why I don’t have $3 million.”
That’s what I was thinking. But then I had to sit down for ten minutes after I got a complete set of Rough Trade Smith’s 7″ Singles on eBay a few weeks ago. Even if I’d have had $3 million (or something to sell to raise $3 million), winning an auction like this would probably have killed me.
| 19 September, 2008, 4:35 am |
Time to try some math.
If it takes 10 Megabytes to store 1 minute of HiFi sound, then how much storage space would it take to store 1 million 30 minute LPs?
I come up with 300 Terabytes. Is that right? Or am I using TheIrie’s calculator? 
| 19 September, 2008, 5:06 am |
If we had 100 record players spinning 8 hours a day, five days a week for 50 weeks (two weeks off for holiday) — It would take 2 and a 1/2 years to digitize 1 million albums.
| 19 September, 2008, 5:38 am |
Holy crap! Does that mean it would take 250 years for one person to listen to 1 million 30 minute LP’s?
| 19 September, 2008, 9:20 am |
“Holy crap! Does that mean it would take 250 years for one person to listen to 1 million 30 minute LP’s?”
This is a scary thought for any of us who have moderately sized record collections: there probably isn’t enoght leisure time left in our lifetime to listen to all those records again, and some will have been put back on teh shelf for the last time.
Oh god, now I’m depressed.
| 19 September, 2008, 10:45 am |
That’s not depressing, it’s a joyous thing! It means that you have thousands of hours of what you either considered or at very least have considered to be worthwhile human endeavour stored on your shelves / hard drive, any part of which may yet provide you with great pleasure at some point in your life. I find that just going into the loft and *looking* at records brings me pleasure! The only time I get sad is when looking through the archives makes me remember all the amazing ones I’ve lost / broken / had nicked over the years.
| 19 September, 2008, 10:51 am |
But back on topic - there REALLY must be someone who can take this on? It would be such a prestige purchase for someone with music connections, say Apple Corp… anyone got Steve Jobs’s number?
| 19 September, 2008, 11:00 am |
Don’t be depressed, Brett. At my peak I think I had collected a measly 300 albums. But I knew every fucking note of every album I owned. And remember– you don’t have to impress the world, just your friends. 
| 19 September, 2008, 11:50 am |
“you don’t have to impress the world, just your friends. “
Very true. I find the first thing I look at is a person’s record collection.
“The only time I get sad is when looking through the archives makes me remember all the amazing ones I’ve lost / broken / had nicked over the years.”
*Wails*
| 19 September, 2008, 11:55 am |
“But back on topic - there REALLY must be someone who can take this on? It would be such a prestige purchase for someone with music connections, say Apple Corp… anyone got Steve Jobs’s number?”
It seems so obvious that some individual or organisation with the cash should take this over that I can’t help thinking there must be some other complication. But what could it be? The terms on his website seem perfectly reasonable.
| 19 September, 2008, 1:34 pm |
Maybe most of this stuff is archived already. Who knows what the US Government has buried all over hell and creation. They’re weird like that. Those fucking records last a lot longer than magnetic tape, though.
| 19 September, 2008, 4:06 pm |
a music lover with as much money as sense
I have much more sense than money, but I also can’t work out why nobody has bought it. Especially if you think what a pickled cow goes for nowadays.
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