Hit 500 vinyl records last Sunday and it snuck up on me

I was just sorting through my stack after grabbing a bunch from an estate sale in Akron, and I decided to count them all for fun. Turned out I hit exactly 500 records, which is wild because I never set out to collect that many. Started about 7 years ago when I found a box of old jazz albums at a thrift store for 50 cents each. Now half my living room wall is shelving I built myself to hold them all. The craziest part is I still remember where I got most of them, like that one from a dusty basement in Youngstown or the haul from a garage sale where the guy just wanted them gone. Does anyone else lose track of how big their collection gets until you actually do a head count?

3 comments

3 Comments

alex_wilson791mo ago

Do you think hitting that milestone changes the way you think about buying more, or are you still just grabbing whatever looks interesting? I'm curious because I'm at about 350 and I've started getting picky, like I only buy stuff I know I'll actually spin. But then I'll find a weird local band record for a dollar and suddenly I'm back to grabbing anything. Do you have a rule for yourself now about what goes in the collection?

noahmartin1mo ago

Start treating 500 like a diet - telling myself I'll only buy stuff I'll actually listen to, then immediately breaking it for some dusty polka record. My rule is basically "if it looks weird and costs less than a coffee, it's coming home.

matthewmartin1mo ago

I read this article about how collectors hit a wall around 400-500 records where the dopamine hit of finding a cheap weird record fights with the reality of shelf space. The guy in the piece said he started asking himself if he'd actually listen to something more than twice before buying it, but then he'd still grab anything that looked handmade or had a photocopied cover. I'm at 400 myself and that local band trap is real, especially when its something obscure from like 1983 that nobody else has ever heard of.