The Internet has been a real boon for me. I buy records from all over the world, mostly older pressings, obscure jazz, protometal -rock/heavy psych, I collide with the "collector" market in some cases. I’ve slowed way down. At peak, I had about 17k LPs, winnowed that down to around 5.5k or so when I moved to Texas, probably bought a thousand more since I’ve been here, and gotten rid of another thousand.
What I have is fairly curated-- a deep shelf of Vertigo Swirls, pretty substantial label collections of Island pink, Strata-East, some Nimbus West, a couple walls of "classic rock" including preferred pressings, lots of classical from Decca, London/Decca, EMI ASD, some RCA Dogs and Mercury Living Presence, lots of old audiophile stuff I rarely listen to, but am reluctant to part with; I can "shop" my "stacks" and will occasionally buy a new record but am not chasing the 12th copy of some warhorse, have multiples of some records in the elusive chase for a better sounding copy. There have been preferred dealers over the years, from EIL in England to Ella in Japan, I found a guy selling dumpster finds of sealed Nathan Davis Segue pressings that were tossed when the studio went bankrupt. I used to attend the shows in NY and Austin, don’t much bother anymore. I maintain a few relationships with collectors. It has gotten to be an expensive hobby, it wasn’t always so. And grading is all over the place. It’s nice to encounter a vendor who grades conservatively.
I learned a lot about cleaning and care when I dove deeply into it in around 2014. Bought a Monks Omni, had the Audio Desk, got a KL and eventually, got a good quality (Furutech branded Orb DF-2) record flattener, which has been a life saver.
