Record Collecting

How I Started

When I was 16 years old, I remember going to Hot Topic with some friends and noticing they had a crate hidden towards the back of the store. I kneeled down and went through the crate, checking out all the records they had that I didn't even know about, and picked out a random one. It was the first record I ever bought, and since then my collection has grown to almost 90, and become one of my favorite hobbies. I don't think I'll ever stop this hobby, I just hope I'll always have a place to store my growing collection.

a picture of a vinyl record

Old Is New

Around the 2010s, record collecting became a popular hobby for many, with the “hipster” trend becoming more widespread, a lot of people wanted to go for that old-school aesthetic. My interest started from that for sure, but it mainly culminated when I started making friends who, like me, were also musically inclined. These were some online friends I met, and some of them were local luckily, so we started hanging out and going record shopping occasionally. Whether it was big-box stores like Barnes & Noble, or more traditional record stores, I started getting exposed to the world of collecting physical media (while records are the main subject here, I also have a sizeable CD collection, along with some cassettes as well). As soon as I started attending my first college, I noticed there was a record store en route to the campus, and almost instantly I started stopping there after classes, spending all of my hard-earned money from my job at the time. I was always looking for limited-edition things, especially colored vinyl, and would usually spend hours just perusing the crates to see if there was anything from artists I know, or just anything that looked neat. One of the most fun things about dealing with records is the fact that the album art is so large, making it easier to appreciate all the detail and make purchase decisions based on art alone. That didn’t always work out unfortunately, but I’d get really neat finds from time to time, so it balanced out. When I changed schools and visiting a physical store became less likely for me, I turned towards online, directly purchasing from the artists I liked the most. I’ll always prefer going to brick-and-mortar stores, but the availability of rare pressings online is extremely enticing (and my music taste isn’t exactly the easiest to find in-stores a lot of the time). Ever since moving to Texas, I haven’t had the chance to really go to a record store, so I’m exclusively online. Despite that though, some of my best finds are from recent times, and I’m happy as long as I get to keep growing my collection.