The Archive

New York based director Sean Dunne filmed a documentary about Paul Mawhinne, owner of the biggest record collection in the world. Paul has been collecting and trading records for the last 40 years, now owning a total of 1M albums and another 1.5M singles. To give you some more impressing numbers, his oldest record dates back to 1881. The Library of Congress estimated, that only 17% of the music on these records (from between 1948 to 1966) is available to buy on a CD today. Unfortunately, Paul's health condition forces him to let go of his collection, which is believed to be worth about $50M. In resignation he is willing to give it away for about $3M - which still hasn't attracted any serious buyer.

If it hadn't been Daz (from Bugz in the Attic) visiting Paul's shop Record-Rama in Pittsburgh (and writing about it on Facebook), I would've probably missed this documentary, which was already all over the media a couple of months ago.

Published on November 13, 2008