20140606

Collecting vinyl and moving overseas

So over the last few months my wife and I have been preparing to move overseas. This is a difficult task on many levels, but for the purpose of this blog, I will focus on one aspect of it: my music collection. The cassette tapes and CD's are easy, I am just putting them in boxes and in storage. They aren't worth that much to begin with, and they will be fine in storage, as I rarely listen to them anyway. 99% of the music contained on them exist as MP3's in my iTunes library. But I am too obsessed with artwork and packaging to let them go permanently.

The difficult part about the move is my vinyl collection. Number one, I am attached to it, and I am adding to it all the time. Secondly, it is worth a lot. Vinyl, unlike other formats of physical music, either holds its value or appreciates over time. I actually have my collection insured.

But for the purposes of moving, the problems with vinyl records are that they are super heavy, fragile, and sensitive to temperature changes. All that said, I cannot take my collection of nearly 400 records across the Atlantic ocean. So for the most part, they are staying here. Today I completed the move of the majority of my collection, the shelf they are stored on, and my stereo from my home to a friend's place, who has agreed to care for them/listen to them for 5 years. (What a deal, right!?)

So a couple weeks ago I bought a vintage LP case from the 1960's (?) to store some records to take with me. It is made of metal has a handle and a latch, and will be one of my carry-on's when I fly. I wasn't sure how many records it would hold, but below is what will fit (14 albums, which is 23 total records).

Narrowing down my collection from 400 to 14 was clearly challenging, but the final selections were made based on a combination of the music itself (mostly all-time favorites), the artwork, the color of the vinyl, and the rarity (and value) of release.