The Archive - (The World's Largest Record Collection)

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Damn!  I thought I had a lot of records but this puts my ass to shame.  Paul Mawhinney is the owner of what has become the world's largest vinyl record collection.  The collection became so big that his wife made him move everything out of the basement to outside storage.  He ended up finding an empty warehouse of some sort to handle his collection.  He now has over 1 million albums and another 1+ million singles.  Here are some of the highlights:

- He owns what he says is the first flat record from 1881.  That is insane!  That alone is probably worth about $100K
- He has a Rolling Stones album that was never released commercially and is said to be worth about $6K-$10K
- The collection is said to be valued at around $50 MILLION.  Holy shit!!!!
- He is only asking for $3 Million for the entire collection

Paul has a health condition and needs to sell his collection to help with medical bills.  That kind of sucks because it sounds like this collection is one of those things that he is really proud of and keeps him motivated each day.  Although there probably won't be a lot of people looking to purchase the collection because of it's size, cost and actual music selection (sounds like mostly older rock) I am still surprised that some rich bastard hasn't taken it off his hands just because they can.

I'm also surprised that some of the big Hip Hop producers haven't asked to go diggin' in his collection to find some rare gems to sample and use on some new tracks.  It's possible that some have asked to do this and just purchase chunks of his collection but they didn't mention it in the video so who knows.  I have a feeling that he might want to sell it as one entity, which will be tough.

I think this video will definitely help get his story out there and I am sure someone that can afford it will make him an offer sometime soon.  Although it seems crazy to most people, anyone that appreciates music and/or vinyl will want this guy to finally get rewarded in some way for being one of the best music collectors of all time.