My dealer is about 30 miles away & at a demo event he held several years ago I met someone who has since become a friend &, amazingly, lives a 5 minute walk from me.
Until joining this forum I believed that I had a large record collection of approximately 1,000 albums & CD’s. I soon realised that many on here would fall about laughing at this & would query why I had such a small collection as I had been buying records since Christmas 1963, when I was 8 years old.
My friend has a collection about four times the size of mine which, in my book, qualifies as large, although a high number here match or exceed it. However, what really stands out about his collection to me is that his two favourite artists are Van Morrison & Bob Dylan & he has seen both live on many, many occasions. I was staggered to learn that he has 254 Van Morrison albums & CD’s & in excess of 700, yes 700, of Bob Dylan. I had considered my 50 or so Cream/Clapton albums to be something worth shouting about!
Hence my thread title. Can anyone match or beat this?
Edit - For comparison I have 1 Van Morrison although I admit it is a double CD. I have 1 Dylan album & 3 CD’s (1 of which is of the album!).
The majority are bootleg recordings that he has all sorts of sources for. I have seen two large crates containing the Van Morrison collection & there were two crates next to them which he said was part of the Dylan discs.
I mentioned a 1995 performance by Page & Plant concert in Cornwall that we both attended. He said “I’ve got a bootleg recording, do you want a copy?”. I now have one.
There are clearly thousands of bootlegs & other limited edition recordings. When I saw Genesis at Madison Square Garden in 2007, you could buy a CD of the New York performance from a Boston record store a couple of days after the performance that was only available for 14 days. It was the same for every other American venue of their tour.
That’s the first thing I have always wondered about anyone with these huge collections.
I recall someone one here, with a collection of 13,500 albums, that there were probably 2/3,000 that they had never listened to & that, many times, they had multiple copies of the same recordings because they forgot they already had it.
A lot of the time it appears very similar to other forms of addiction to me.
Don’t forget that, and I don’t get why, some people have 50 copies of the same freaking album in their collections with the excuse that they all sound different.
Trust me, when you get older and your hearing and sight start to fade away, it won’t mean s**t!
Oh yer I have 15,719 albums but I know a few other people that have collections in excess of this and on the forum the legendary @BertBird probably has double what I have.
Entirely agree with you Tony but as I said above, for many it must be a form of addiction.
That said I do own 2 album & 3 CD versions of Wish You Were Here! Even when much younger they all sounded pretty similar to me and what differences that were audible had me doubting whether it was worth buying the ‘new, improved’ version.
I’ve a library of books. It occupies one room. I’ve read every book in it at least once bar the 12 at my bedside waiting to be consumed.
Before moving to streaming I ripped 1,725 CDs. All had been listened to at least twice. Most many more times. Anything above these sorts of numbers isn’t for listening or reading. It’s for owning, showing off, hoarding etc. Choose the adjective of your choice. Attach a pejorative meaning as you do or don’t.
Your money. Your choice. Spend as you wish. Just don’t pretend it’s about listening to music.
