Years of patient crate-digging finally produce a collection worth celebrating
A Collection Years in the Making
A Sixth Former’s ongoing vinyl record collection, patiently built over several years of exeat visits to local record shops and a steady stream of birthday and Christmas gifts from indulgent relatives, reached what he calls “a genuinely satisfying milestone” this week after his three hundredth record was added to the collection during a routine exeat browsing trip, a number he had been quietly tracking for some time and specifically timed his most recent purchase to hit. “I’d been sitting at two hundred and ninety-nine for a few weeks,” he admitted, “purely waiting for the right record to actually round it off properly.”
A Hobby That Started Almost by Accident
The collector traces his interest back to a single record inherited from a family member several years ago, a modest beginning that has since grown into what his housemates describe as “a genuinely impressive, carefully organised operation,” with the collection sorted meticulously by genre and, within genre, alphabetically by artist. “It sounds excessive,” he admitted, “but honestly the organising is half the fun for me at this point, almost as much as the actual listening.”
A Milestone Marked With Genuine Ceremony
To mark the three-hundredth addition, the collector organised a small informal listening session for interested housemates, playing a selection of favourites from across the collection’s full span, an evening several attendees described as “genuinely more engaging than I expected from just listening to records for a couple of hours.” The collector’s careful curation of the evening’s selections was widely praised, with one attendee noting that “he clearly put real thought into which records would actually work well together.”
A Collection Still Growing
Exams & University understands the collector has already begun planning toward his next milestone, with a modest but genuine goal of reaching four hundred records before he eventually leaves the school, a target several housemates have said they intend to help him work toward with future gift purchases.
A Hobby That’s Become a Genuine Part of His Identity
Whatever the collection’s eventual final size, the collector says the hobby has given him a genuine sense of accomplishment distinct from anything academic, summing up its appeal simply as “it’s mine, entirely, and I built it one record at a time, which feels like it means something even if nobody else particularly cares.” Several housemates, initially only mildly curious about the hobby, have since asked to be included in future listening sessions, a development the collector says has made the whole pursuit feel considerably less solitary than it used to.
More from this section at Exams & University and coverage of the wider school world at The London Prat.
For further reading in a similar spirit, see The Onion and Private Eye.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk
