The Largest Record Collection In The World

Watch the video. Isn't it sad? Paul Mawhinney is the owner of the largest record collection in the world, and he's been trying to sell it for a few years, at an asking price of 3 million, but has yet to receive a real serious offer. He's 69 years old and is legally blind, which I'm sure makes his daily grind that much harder. I feel like I posted about Paul a few months ago, when this story was just in the papers, and hadn't yet made it to a web video, but I can't remember for certain.

I guess the common thinking would be, hey why doesn't some big rap producer buy the collection from him? They've probably got 3 million laying around, right?

Uhhh... no. Actually after buying 10 million dollar houses with extra pools, and Bentleys for disasters like Lil Kim, there's not much left over for ya'know, consuming music.

I think the biggest obstacle facing anyone who would want to buy the collection is finding a place to store it properly. You'd literally need to own a warehouse or something. And that's where the 3 million dollar price tag starts ballooning into something else altogether.

What I would love to see happen is some arts foundation take it off his hands and maybe create a vinyl museum. A vinyl library. How are records any different from books? In the United States, for some people it's more important to have a big library than a big dick (think: rich, old world, society types). Why isn't vinyl treated the same way?

Paul seems very dejected, down about the fact that he dedicated his whole life to collecting and archiving vinyl, and nobody seems to care. In some respects, he's a dinosaur. A relic. A byproduct of a forgotten era. This video sorta hit me in the heart.