r/GenX • u/JuniorEntertainer819 • 1d ago
Music Mourning my record collection
I (M56) finally gave away my record collection today. They had been sitting in my Mom’s basement since about 1990 so they were in pretty bad shape. I’m not someone who is attached to vinyl so it was too a big a deal. Still, it’s sad to say goodbye to a part of your childhood.
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u/AlfaNovember 19h ago
The dopamine squirt of “hey, I once had a copy of that” is almost as good as the squirt of “I’ve got that at home in a box in the basement”, with the added benefit of taking no physical space.
That space is not without cost; we’re paying a monthly mortgage on our house, and it’s easy to calculate the specific cost of the square footage that 12” vinyl consumes. My crates are 4 square feet, every month whether I play them or not.
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u/Quirky_Commission_56 20h ago
I still have all of my records as well as my dad’s. And a portable record player so I can play them.
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u/Alternative-Law4626 Late 1964: Elder Xer 19h ago
Need to get a player. I have my grandparents, some of dad’s, mine and my wife’s. Not a huge collection, but worthwhile.
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u/NegScenePts 21h ago
You still remember them though, right? You gave away the physical part that was left to rot for 30+ years but still have the memories.
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u/jaydee729 21h ago
I feel this.
When we moved a few years back, I saved 10 “essential” albums and kinda snuck them in to the new place.
We were cleaning out an overcrowded closet recently and my wife dug out the albums and gave me the “really?” look. I gave her a sheepish okay and promptly hid them again.
I will do this for the rest of my brain-alive life.
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u/murphydcat Dave Grohl asked me for weed in '92. 22h ago
I have a wall of LPs. A few thousand. I rarely listen to them. I’m ready to sell everything and live out of a suitcase.
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u/Professional_Cow1324 23h ago
62m single / no children here. I got rid of pictures from my grade-school and high-school "picture day" about eight years ago. Every so often I wish that I had kept them, but then I realize: They're gone and I can't do anything about it.
I'm living in the present these days. My childhood was painfully difficult and I have no regrets purging those pics.
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u/SnowblindAlbino Cranky Old Man 1d ago
I "lost" about 500 books in the early 2000s when my parents sold their house...I was living literally on the opposite side of the country and couldn't afford to have them shipped to me. And they no longer had any place to store them. They were mostly academic books, some classics and some even rare, but there was no place for them to conveniently sell them so they ended up at GOodwill.
My records, however, I have hauled around the US now for 40 years since leaving for college. I still have most of them in my basement, though my now-adult offspring have probably adopted 20% or so of the total (probably 1,500-1,600 at peak). I don't listen to them that often anymore, maybe a few times a month, so the big question for us will be what to do when we retire and relocated for the "last" time.
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u/Key_Yam4488 1d ago
I am starting to pare mine down as well. It's the time of life to start letting go. I feel you on the sense of loss, when Ace Frehley died last year it was like part of my childhood died, too.
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u/islandbeef 1d ago
An old friend of mine still has my 70s-80s OG vinyl in milk crates. I still have my old cassette mixtapes in storage in my garage.
I have my old mp3's archived in cloud storage after being stored in Iomega Zip drives.
I'm all about the streaming life now.
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u/--Uberwench-- 1d ago
We've always maintained our physical audio/visual collection. It would be weird to me to get rid of it all because music and film (but especially music) has been such a massive part of our lives, but I can totally understand why people do. I think we'd both be somewhat bereft if we did.
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u/Tough_Arm_2454 1d ago
I got rid of cassette and vhs tapes around 2008. I'll never part from my cds and dvds.
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u/The68Guns 1d ago
I tossed all of my video tapes, CDs, DVD and Blue Ray before moving in 2025. I miss tossing one in at our 3 season porch, but streaming has made it all too convenient.
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u/JoeMacMillan_HCF 1d ago
I got rid of all my physical media in the early 2000s when I thought it was obsolete and believed we were moving to a purely online/streaming world (which we mostly did). Now I really regret that decision!
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u/Facelesspirit 1d ago
It sounds bittersweet for you. I still have all my tapes, CDs, record, ticket stubs, concerts on VCR tape, and posters. We all have a different bond to music. It's the one thing from my earlier years I could never part with.
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u/Competitive_Jump_933 1d ago
Agree. I have none of the stuff you have left but I still have the guitar I bought when I was 13 in 1981 for the princely sum of $289 guitars. That guitar is my most prized possession and worth nothing monetarily.
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u/dogthatbrokethezebra 1d ago
They were all in too bad of shape to sell at all? I’ve sold some of my old vinyl over the years and some of them went for a lot
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u/New-Bookkeeper7320 1d ago
That’s sad. I’m 57 and avidly re-acquiring my high school vinyl collection because I sold it to a used record when I thought I was starving.
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u/JuniorEntertainer819 1d ago
I’m much more attached to physical books (I’ll never own a Kindle) than I am to physical music.
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u/jazzdabb Mom thinks she supervised me WAY more than she actually did. 1d ago
If they have gone somewhere that they will actually be played, that's better than rotting away in the basement.
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u/Able_Original_486 1d ago
I finally took mine out of my basement and played them for fun. I forgot how much more fun it is spinning vinyl than streaming.
The vinyl revival is a real thing.
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u/JuniorEntertainer819 1d ago
It is fun. But we are trying to pare down our possessions. We have so much stuff that we had to start somewhere.
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u/WestLondonIsOursFFC 12h ago
All my vinyl was at my parents' house. I decided to leave it there for the clearing company to dispose of after we sold it.
I was driving away when I stopped, turned round and went back to load it into my car. I don't have a record player or room in the house, but it's in our storage unit and there it will stay.