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Chris Higgins
Buy the World’s Greatest Music Collection
by Chris Higgins - February 20, 2008 - 1:53 PM

Record collector Paul Mawhinney is selling his personal collection, including three million records, 300,000 CDs, and much, much more. Mawhinney is also throwing in:

Record collection…(1) the rights to Spin-Clean, the owner’s patented vinyl record cleaning system, considered the best on the market by audiophiles the world over, (2) the rights to Discmist CD cleaner, (3) CD Saver 2-part archival CD storage sleeves, (4)Yellow Jacket 45 RPM acid-free archival storage sleeves, (5) ownership of the owner’s six publishing companies and eight independent record labels, and (7) more than $100,000 worth of antique recording and listening devices and other music memorabilia currently on loan to a museum.

The collection is for sale on eBay with an opening bid of US $3,000,000 (plus shipping from Pittsburgh). eBay helpfully notes that you can get $10 off if you apply for an eBay Mastercard — so get bidding, people!

Mawhinney, owner of the famous Record-Rama music shop, is selling the collection due to his declining health. He wants the collection kept together, perhaps as a museum or music library. He has also put together a World’s Greatest Music Collection web site with more details. The collection represents over 6 million song titles, so think of it this way: at the opening bid price, it’s only 50 cents per song! That’s cheaper than iTunes.

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Comments (12)

  1. man i was just listening to this guy on npr yesterday. i thought if only i had the money to buy the collection. and i was reminded of how broke i am (again). i want those vinyls!!!

    posted by meta on 2-20-2008 at 2:06 pm

  2. Only interested if it contains:

    Jools Holland And His Millionaires
    Jools Holland Meets Rock-A-Boogie Billy
    Three Out Change (Supercar)
    All Fleshtones records up to (and including) Time Bomb!

    If I had the capital, and the time, I’d buy this lot, digitize the above records, sell the rest.

    posted by Joe Maz on 2-20-2008 at 2:43 pm

  3. Amazing! And I thought we had alot of records!

    posted by beth on 2-20-2008 at 3:04 pm

  4. It sort of raises some red flags for me that neither in the auction listing nor on the website is there even a partial listing of the contents. While I wouldn’t expect him to list millions and millions of records, if he’s the music expert he presents himself to be, he would know some of the highlights that might be noteworthy to mention and could write a decent list that would be representative of what the collection actually contains. No list. No pics close enough to make any of the titles recognizable, except for that circle of records, with no claim that they are included in or representative of the mix or quality of the collection, so he could just say that they are an artistic representation of a history of records). Those could be the only decent dozen records in the lot and the rest be tons of duplicates of unsold stock of no-name artists and irrelevant bargain bin stuff. Could be a handful of cool records and a bunch of yard sale reject junk. Sounds way too good to be true. And usually, when it sounds that way, it is. Not that I have 3 million bucks, but if I did, I’d want it, but I’d be way too wary to bid on it.

    posted by Melissa on 2-20-2008 at 3:07 pm

  5. If you’ve invested in a collection of over three million records there has got to be all kinds of good stuff in there. He operates a music museum for pete’s sake! I agree you have to have a healthy degree of skepticism, but vinyl collectors, as a rule, are pretty preoccupied with finding worthwhile records.

    posted by Andy on 2-20-2008 at 5:00 pm

  6. Does it have the “Wild Man Fischer” album on it?

    /If not, it’s bogus! BOGUS!

    posted by Moon on 2-20-2008 at 7:25 pm

  7. I’ve been to his store; you’re likely to get at least 1000 copies of Al Hirt or Sinatra and such. Probably 90% filler, 10% killer. Waste of plastic and space.

    posted by Jack on 2-21-2008 at 9:19 am

  8. The collection was appraised by Forever Vinyl at an average value of $50 million dollars. The collection has a charity donation value of $50 million and what should happen is that the cream of the collection should be sold off and the rest donated to charity for a nice tax write off. We offered to complete the appraisal but Recordrama couldn’t take advantage of the tax write off. The new owners can.
    Scott Neuman President of Forever Vinyl. As it stands. He got around 6 cents on the dollar for the collection. Way below a donated value of dollar for dollar.

    posted by Scott Neuman on 2-22-2008 at 11:11 am

  9. THIS HAS BEEN EXPOSED AS A FRAUD AND NOTHING MORE THAN EBAY TRYING TO HYPE THEIR SITE DURING THE BOYCOTT… THE BUYER jopsoup NOW CLAIMS THAT HIS ACCOUNT WAS HACKED… SO MUCH FOR EBAY’S RECORD SALE!!! LOL!!!

    posted by JJ on 2-25-2008 at 11:28 pm

  10. JJ – the auction was legitimate, but it appears that the winning bidder’s account was hacked. So I would be careful to say that the bid was fraudulent, not the whole thing.

    posted by Higgins on 2-26-2008 at 4:27 pm

  11. Is not the interesting part of this story not the collection itself and whether or not it is worth $3 million, but the idea that a forum exists on which such a collection could be listed, examined, and discussed, all without our ever having seen the collection?

    I never cease to be amazed by the offerings on eBay!

    posted by Kent Higgins on 2-28-2008 at 8:06 pm

  12. i wanna see a track list…hahahaha…

    posted by steve on 3-4-2008 at 11:20 am

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