Paul Mawhinney examines a Rolling Stones album worth $10,000.
Paul Mawhinney calls it the World's Greatest Music Collection, and he might just be right. He is the owner of a music archive numbering more than three million records and 300,000 CDs, from "the first CD ever produced" to Elvis Presley's Sun Records 45s, but he's finally had enough. The entire collection, indexed and catalogued, is now for sale. And while for years he entertained private offers from businesses and even the US Library of Congress, Mawhinney is sick of people backing out of deals. Now, it's serious. Now, the whole kit and caboodle will go to the highest bidder.
Mawhinney values the collection at more than $50 million but he may end up selling it for far, far less. It is for sale via the auction website eBay and its starting bid - at the time of writing still unmet - is a mere $3 million. More importantly, as the listing underlines, "This is a NO RESERVE auction. High bid wins."
Mawhinney is the owner of Record-Rama, a Pittsburgh-based shop, mail-order and music archive that has over 36 years become a shrine to the history of popular music. It is housed, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times, "in a 16,400-square-foot customized cavern/retail hub ... beneath a strip mall." The winning bidder will have to pay for the collection to be packed up and shipped out - to London, Dubai, Moscow or wherever the wealthy music geek resides.
According to the owner, the collection was almost sold ten years ago, at the height of the dotcom bubble. CD Now, an online music retailer, had offered $28.5 million when suddenly - and to Mawhinney's extreme chagrin - they declared bankruptcy instead. Talks with the US Library of Congress broke down when the Library suffered budget cutbacks and had to reduce their offer. "It's a very good collection that the Library would be delighted to have," a representative told the Pittsburgh Business Times. Mawhinney's position was a little less friendly: "They broke my heart. They broke my spirit. And I told them they could never call me again," he said.
Today, citing health worries, it's a once-and-for-all situation. While Mawhinney says he would be happy to see the collection in the hands of a museum or archive, he'll sell it to whoever can put up the most funds. That is, so long as they promise to keep the collection intact and meet his comfortably vague requirement "to keep the music alive for the enjoyment [of] music lovers, now and for years to come."
If the American government can't help, perhaps there is a rich Saudi prince who is just three million LPs away from completing his private music library.
auction website eBay
2008/02/21 by Sean Michaels - www.music.guardian.co.uk / www.epgold.com
Das nackte Wahnsinn!
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