Vinyl collecting and the first serious record I bought with the intent of collecting rather than just listening is a story I keep returning to.

I'd been listening to music on records casually for a year — thrift store finds, gifts, records from friends who were clearing out their collections. The first record I bought specifically because I wanted to own it and had sought it out is a different category of object in my collection.

The transition from listener to collector happens at different moments for different people. Some people are collectors from the first record; others never quite become collectors even if they accumulate hundreds of records. The distinction is about intentionality — whether the records are primarily a listening medium or also objects with their own value as objects.

I've noticed that my most-played records are almost never the ones I'm most precious about as physical objects. The records I love listening to and the records I love owning are overlapping but not identical categories.