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In case you were wondering just who owned that six-million-song music collection that’s currently listed on eBay with a starting price of $3 million: Meet Paul Mawhinney, an obsessive music cataloger and record-collectors’-guide publisher who also owned the Pittsburgh-area shop Record-Rama. In a 2003 profile of his business, he was quoted as saying “Almost all the guys out on the front line of the music business are all conniving to get what they can.” And given his past history of deals where he’s almost made some cash from his collection, it’s easy to see why he feels this way!
Mawhinney has had a few prospective buyers for his collection over the years; In 1997, former online-music powerhouse CDNow told Mawhinney they’d buy his collection for $28.5 million, only to wind up in bankruptcy court shortly after; then, a deal to sell his extensive collection of singles to the Library of Congress fell through after Mawhinney’s asking price was too rich for the LoC’s tax-funded budget. Mawhinney–who wants to have a deal in place by March 1–is still working the archivist angle for future buyers, as evidenced by his thoughts on what would make a suitable home for the collection:
The History of American music belongs in a museum or a library; a place where people who love music and have an interest in history and popular American culture can look, listen, touch, read and appreciate this legacy for future generations. It could be part of a stand-alone music museum, a major exhibit in an existing museum, or the basis of a university music library. Cleverly arranged and displayed, and surrounded by additional cultural memorabilia, the collection could even become a tourist attraction.
We’re seeking a buyer who will guarantee to keep the collection intact (other than to sell duplicate copies, if so desired) and to keep the music alive for the enjoyment and music lovers, now and for years to come.
If you represent a museum, library, university, or charitable foundation, or you’re a philanthropist interested in purchasing the collection and donating it, please contact the owner’s representatives for more information, pricing and a personal on-site inspection.
He’s also estimating the value of the collection at $50 million, although if someone can sweet-talk his representatives–one of whom is former sitcom staple Telma Hopkins–perhaps the asking price will be lower. This is the part where I do wish that there was some sort of popular-music museum out there, or at least that the Experience Music Project hadn’t ceded all that space to the science fiction guys over the past few years. Sigh.
The Greatest Music Collection [Official site]
Failed deals for fabled musical archive strike sour note with owner [Pittsburgh Business Times]
The World’s Greatest Music Collection [eBay; HT PTW]
See, now if I’d just saved all my jewel cases and tray cards…
Even a museum devoted to popular music would likely be unwilling to pay Mawhinney’s steep asking price. The closest thing there is to a popular music museum is either Experience or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and both would find the money extravagant. The collection would probably thrive in a more academic setting though, but places like that don’t even remotely have the funds Mawhinney is demanding, which is a shame. Maybe if they threw in a monthly Tony Orlando and Dawn reunion concert…
Shit, having just disposed of maybe 50% of my own collection (dropped about 3K 12″ vinyl) dude would be lucky to get $1 mil for that stash. Seriously, the market is for shit right now, unless you are a buyer.
Oh snap- Aunt Rachel.
She was the only one who’d never kick Urkel out. She even gave him a job when she opened that restaurant.
I think someone with a genuine philanthropic interest in the contents of this collection should have it. The overall probative value of its contents, if converted direct from vinyl to digital and archived for usage in schools, institutions of higher learning and even to the general public, is unfathomable.
Can you imagine having access to a digital archive of vinyl recordings that have never been played? I would hate for a vulture to buy the collection and rip it apart for its contents or for some whacko billionaire whose kid has aspirations of being a DJ to buy it up so the little bastard can walk to the warehouse once a month and dig for the perfect beat.
I look at this collection and I think about those characters from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I worry what will happen if Charlie Bucket doesn’t get to have this.
I used to shop there back in the day…great store…He used to rent old archive records (LP)…my father rented a couple of long out of print bluegrass records that couldnt be found anywhere else…
There are so many out of print and frankly last remaining copy types of 33 1/3 and 45s in this collection that one would hope that somehow they are preserved for the future…
He really does have an amazing collection. I used to shop there in the 80s and early 90s before I moved. Its nearly a wonder it is still there. Anything else in town remotely posing as a decent record shop disappeared years and years and years. I understand his want for a large price tag, I guess, but mostly its not really something you can put a dollar on. It sounds like it is almost its own museum, and almost too large (and sometimes too strange and obscure) to be included in some other collection. LOC should have a digital archive of some of those things, but would you really want to turn it over to them in en masse? In an era when a lot of us are ditching most of our LPs, CDs and cassettes for digital, and saving only our most prized and rare of any medium, it seems like he’s about a decade plus too late to find a buyer. From my knowledge of what he has, a majority of it has historical value more than musical historical value. Not to knock the stature of um, the uh, Erie music scene, but if its anything like Pittsburghs…..
MY HERO!
EMP might not be able to afford it, but Paul Allen certainly could…
Aren’t you forgetting the Wonders, the greatest band to ever come out of Erie, PA?