How much vinyl is too much vinyl?
One Pōneke collector has 50,000 records. He let me visit to see them all for myself.
About five years ago, I went through a minimalist phase. I followed a bunch of downsizing experts, watched this movie, listened to the advice of Marie Kondo and got rid of most of my stuff. Surplus clothes and shoes were out. So were excess books and magazines. All those boxes in the shed full of random shit got binned.
Anything I didn't think I'd need again, I sold, tossed or gave away. Soon, I turned my attention to my wardrobe. Stuffed inside it were boxes of collectibles gathered over 20 years of working in media: CDs, DVDs, blu rays, video games and consoles. Most of it was barely used, all of it sitting there, just gathering dust.
Over a number of weeks, I made it disappear. Poof.
Also in my wardrobe was a small but growing collection of vinyl. I was relatively new to the medium. I guess I had about 100 records. It wasn’t serious, but, during this minimalist phase, when I had nothing else left to get rid of, I started clearing out my records too. I traded them in, gave them away, decided I didn't need them anymore.
When I relay this story to Chris (I’ve withheld his last name to avoid identification), he winces. It's something he doesn't understand, something he has never done, something he would never do. Vinyl to him, is history. It tells a story. It should be cherished and preserved. “There might be a cigarette stain on the sleeve,” he says. To him, that’s a good thing. “It may be a fault, but it's [history,] it's provenance.”
He should know. Chris has a record collection unrivalled by anyone else in Aotearoa – at least that I could find. Numbering more than 50,000, his collection is so grand that it’s bigger than most record stores. Most of it is vinyl, and most of it is stored in his “man shed” out the back of his Pōneke house, where records line walls, fill shelves and pack cupboards.
More crates are in the spare room of his house, even more in a separate dwelling where his daughter lives. He’s tried to count them, attempted to catalogue them on Discogs, and one wall is even ordered alphabetically. That, he says, took him months. The situation is, he admits, out of control. “I’m not a hoarder,” he told me one recent Sunday. “But I am a collector.”
Recently, I started collecting vinyl again. This time, there’s intention behind what I’m doing. The records aren’t sitting in my wardrobe. They’re out, in the lounge, being played frequently. I’ve managed to find many of those that I got rid of, and I’m adding new ones too. Last week: A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Midnight Marauders’ and Young Fathers’ ‘Dead’. Fuck you, Marie Kondo: doing this gives me joy.
But embarking on this project got me thinking: someone out there has the biggest record collection in Aotearoa. But who? I started asking around. I got a few leads. I found some with collections numbering 20,000 records or so. Most didn’t want to talk.
One Hamilton collector told me people from that community often won’t promote themselves. You won’t find them on social media. “It's really difficult to find people who want people to know about their collections,” he said. Simply put: they’re worth too much money, and they don’t want to expose themselves to that risk.
Finally, I found Chris, and we began exchanging emails. He estimates only a handful of people have ever seen his collection. Even his friends don’t know about it. But he invited me in, shared his collection with me, played some records, told me why he does it, and explained his madcap system. “There are so many I can go flicking through [them] and go, ‘Oh, I didn't know I had that,” he says. “I’m like a goldfish in here.”
He has many rarities, include sought-after pressings and misprints. He has 12 copies of the Beatles’ White Album. One Led Zeppelin album has the band’s names mixed up. He recently discovered he owns a Ramones record covered in scribbles: they were their signatures. He sold a 33-inch single by the Australian rock act AC/DC for $4500, yet has another copy for himself.
There are, Chris estimates, more than 50,000 records on his shelves. He believes it’s all worth somewhere around $750,000, but he’s not sure. His insurance company won’t cover his collection unless he photographs and prices every single record, an impossible task. So there’s a security camera monitoring it at all times, and he asked me not to publish his last name, location, or anything that could identify where it is.
Yes, his collection is mind-bogglingly huge. Mine – around 150 records – pales in comparison. But this, Chris says, makes him happy. It brings him joy. Coming out to his shed, putting on a record, and losing himself in the music, even for just a brief moment, helps clear his mind, gives him a sense of peace.
While I was there, he chose to play Lana Del Rey’s Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd. It swooped and soared. I heard things I’d never heard in those songs before, like the music was connecting with a different part of my brain. “It’s like … you’re in it,” he said, struggling to explain it himself.
As it swallowed us up, he compared this moment to dessert. “When I come out here,” Chris told me, “it's like finding a bit of hokey pokey in my ice cream.”
I wrote more about this for RNZ. You can read that story here.
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