Everyone will have different goals with their collections. Whilst I do download bootlegs and the like, the main focus of my collection is tracking down each and every version of every officially released song with Prince involvement, on both vinyl and CD where available. Obviously this gets quite expensive once your collection has grown because generally it's the more rare stuff you're missing.

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I find that now with the reissue campaigns coming, I'm focusing my money more towards the non-Prince tracks that are unlikely to see a rerelease in the near future as there's a good chance that the Prince promo edits/mono versions etc will see the light of day on SDE releases.

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I can't spend as much as I'd like these days but I will ocassionally treat myself. I spent £16 on the promo 7" of Cool by The Time this week just to get both the mono and stereo edits of Cool Part I. I keep a comprehensive database of every track available with checklists to show which format I have it on.

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Whilst I hope that related artist deluxe packages will come at some point containing such tracks, I'm not holding my breath so for the time being that is where most of the money and effort will be spent. With a collection of roughly 200 CDs, 150 or so 12"/LP records and about 60 7" records, I estimate that I am still only about 3/4 of the way to collecting everything available.

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Are you content with just the albums and whatever they put on the rereleases or do you also make an effort to track down everything?

I used to want every sound the man made, in every version or combination. Now I don't care as much.
I used to have an excellent physical collection. Sold the whole lot a few years ago. My priorities changed as I got older. Lossless audio files suit me better these days.

[Edited 11/7/20 0:40am]

Obsession level is around 'medium' .

Simply collecting CD's. Not every version, just every burp of sound.

I have all the officially released albums on CD. Probably not going to bother in the future and will just buy digital versions. Read the book once for SOTT, it's nice but probably won't pick it up again. Haven't watched the DVD yet. CD's are still in their slips in the book, I just listen to it on Apple music.

I'll buy digital to support the estate but just not bothered about keeping the physical collection going. The rest of the CD's are in the loft, having all been ripped to MP3 years ago. I just don't hear any difference between high bit rate MP3 and CD.

TheEnglishGent said:

mb71 said:

I used to want every sound the man made, in every version or combination. Now I don't care as much.
I used to have an excellent physical collection. Sold the whole lot a few years ago. My priorities changed as I got older. Lossless audio files suit me better these days.

I'm sorta along this line.

I buy the SDE stuff, but not every purple vinyl pressing. I can't be bothered to rebuy something again for the sake of it.

I used to hoard digital files and had every version of everything. I made CD-Rs from the files I downloaded, covers, etc. It was all too fucking much. Stopped the CD making over a decade ago, or more. Probably by 2002 I gave up on that.

I average about 20K digital files, mostly lossless or the highest bitrate of an iTunes file (it varies). I took time quite a few years ago to rip all of my vinyl to lossless, and didn't bother clean up any pops or crackles in it. I wanted to hear my vinyl. If I had a CD and LP of the same thing, the LP digital files took priority in my library.

I recently went thru my entire library, and whittled down about 4K files. They're toast. Some stuff never had an ID3 tag and just languished near the bottom of my iTunes list. I cleaned that up, deleted unnecessary duplicates, labeled other stuff correctly (which was far and few compared to the amount of files I have overall), all that jazz.

If it something special like the SDE, I'll put out for it. Otherwise, I'll stick to digital.

I do take care of my vinyl. Everything is in a slip cover, alphabetic, etc.

Ahhh LOVE this question!

Been on the purple rain since 84 & my collection is ridiculous! Having seen him live 40+ times too my collection is immense. I recently organised EVERYTHING into chronological orer from uptown/ controversy mags, interviews in magazines , vinyls, tour merch & of course ALL THAT MUSIC inc bootlegs. It's actually scary how much I [WE] will have spent on our purple hero!

Still obessed about my collection & moreson now that it's all in date order...lovely to track & relive the journey actually.

early on, i used to want everything. now i tend to just focus on things i really like and love. like i don't really care for much before 1985 bootleg wise. it just isn't interesting to me. then when i get to the 90's i ignore 1997-2001 lol. my favorite stuff is 1985-1996 then 2005-2016

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I'm a lame Prince collector for 37 years now.

With lame I mean, it had it's ups and downs; ups - pre-1996 and back after he died and downs in between.

Everything I have I use. No interest in unuseful sealed stuff.

Really can't see the point of that. It's like wrapped unread books !

Will never understand that.

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I have loads of vinyl/CD's, and many early bootlegs mostly on CD (+few on vinyl).

A few picture discs, shaped discs, cassettes... etc.

(I'm very proud of my 45 rpm collecting in pristine quality still.

Although I'm not that much interested in collecting different releases with same songs.

(let's say i have a few doubles)

I somehow stopped collecting bootlegs on CD after 2001.

At some point you have so much... and barely listen to it.

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After that, when Hard-Drives arrived with big Terra containers, I (re-)started to collect

downloads of bootlegs, specially unreleased studio material.

Live performances I have too but barely listen to it (there is just so much availble).

And most are in poor quality I really don't care for.

Rehearsals is something I listen always at least once - there is interesting stuff here and there.

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I collect lot's of photo's too (on a HD) + all the tickets of the concerts I've been too (and there were many).

I don't collect T-shirts, caps, hoodies, hangers, bracelets, coffee mugs, posters etc.

Back in the eighties, I collected Prince & related postacards +some posters, but never put them up the walls. (Now I regret I threw away the 30+ posters I had.)

Remember back in the day when you left a Prince concert?

When people outside sold (unofficial) posters ? That was such fun !

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Cardboard US CD releases (2nd half of the 80's early 90's) is something I loved to collect.

They were so nice, still have 'm up until Grafitti Bridge.

Not that much into Japanese collectibles - have a few.

Protégées and related (both vinyl/CD) albums is something I remain collecting.

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All books on Prince and related; only the good ones. Not the photo-only coffee table books.

But I love tourbooks, although they are barely ever interesting.

Plus the better (interesting/informative) magazines.

Also newspapaer articles on concerts +reviews.

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I still have VHS, audio cassettes, some Video Discs +MiniDisks, and a few DVD's,

but they're not my preferable collecting.

If I bump into a thing and it is affordable, I might take it.

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This pandemic really made me go through my collection extensively!

And I love it. I dusted off a lot of old stuff - mainly also due to the reissues.

I relive moments from when I first bought stuff in the 80s etc. Such good memories.

I really enjoy it and can spend a whole day Prince-ing alone at home.

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I also have a huge collection of data from Instagram, Pinterst, facebook and Tumblr.

There is just so much to be found these days.

So many people are creative in assembling all things Prince.

At least now I can see stuff from let's say pre-1983 than I did back in the day.

Or TV appearances he did that were not accessable to us in the EU.

Not to forget Youtube is a great source too.

Thing with data is, is does not physically excist until you consume it.

That's maybe I'm an old fashioned lame colector I guess.

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[Edited 11/16/20 2:02am]

I'm 12" vinyl only. I don't care about coloured vinyl at all, but I'd like to have everything available to listen to on vinyl. I've got a pretty good collection, but there are some that are just out of my price range and it drives me mad! Exodus!

embmmusic said:

Everyone will have different goals with their collections. Whilst I do download bootlegs and the like, the main focus of my collection is tracking down each and every version of every officially released song with Prince involvement, on both vinyl and CD where available. Obviously this gets quite expensive once your collection has grown because generally it's the more rare stuff you're missing.

.

I find that now with the reissue campaigns coming, I'm focusing my money more towards the non-Prince tracks that are unlikely to see a rerelease in the near future as there's a good chance that the Prince promo edits/mono versions etc will see the light of day on SDE releases.

.

I can't spend as much as I'd like these days but I will ocassionally treat myself. I spent £16 on the promo 7" of Cool by The Time this week just to get both the mono and stereo edits of Cool Part I. I keep a comprehensive database of every track available with checklists to show which format I have it on.

.

Whilst I hope that related artist deluxe packages will come at some point containing such tracks, I'm not holding my breath so for the time being that is where most of the money and effort will be spent. With a collection of roughly 200 CDs, 150 or so 12"/LP records and about 60 7" records, I estimate that I am still only about 3/4 of the way to collecting everything available.

.

Are you content with just the albums and whatever they put on the rereleases or do you also make an effort to track down everything?

To that in bold, Wow! What a Collection!

Astasheiks said:

embmmusic said:

With a collection of roughly 200 CDs, 150 or so 12"/LP records and about 60 7" records, I estimate that I am still only about 3/4 of the way to collecting everything available.

.

Are you content with just the albums and whatever they put on the rereleases or do you also make an effort to track down everything?

To that in bold, Wow! What a Collection!

Is that Prince CDs or just CDs in general? I have about 300 CDs, 450 vinyls, and other misc stuff, overall.

That's just Prince stuff

All albums - first on vinyl, and then I bought CDs once they were released. I got hooked on Purple Rain as a teenager, and probaly the next 15 years I bought all albums on the day of their release. I did not buy the "internet only" albums he sold independently, as I downloaded these.

I have a pretty large collection of 12inchs, probably almost complete - again, some vinyl, some CDs. Again, probably everything released between PR and TheGoldExperience I bought more or less on the day of release. If I saw a promotional copy somewhere bought it immediately at that time.

Most officially release CD-singles.

Never bothered with 7inches

Lots of bootlegs on vinyl in the beginning (loved the chase), then on CDs (but less so). I once "ordered" around 30 CDs incl. videos of cocerts from someone in Singapore, but somehow this was too much to digest. Lost interest once everything was available on the internet, and I also did not like to have heard songs already before they were officially released.

Read lots of stuff in magazines, but never collected these.

Overall, never saw this as a collector's mission, but as a great musical ride. The exitment of opening a new Prince record, dropping the needle on the vinyl, and then listening for hours on end - for the joy this brought I am eternally grateful to Prince.

Started out discovering 12" singles in about 1987. Started collecting them from a store in our mall that had lots of the older 12's there as well. I didn't realize at the time how many 12" singles there really are in the world. It started as US pressings since I am in the USA. Then I started finding UK pressings. Right now I have over 200 12" singles from 13 countries and I know that isn't nearly all of them! I also have every official 45 from the US. I have a few foreign 45's but I'm not as concerned with them as I am with the 12" singles. I also have every US CD. I have a few 8-tracks and some of the older albums. I have all the downloads. I also have tons of old bootleg albums and CD's. After his death I started getting more serious on getting everything that comes out.

I'm heading the opposite way.

I used to have a massive collection, and I mean rooms of stuff. Every bit of vinyl, CDs, associated artists, promos, in store displays, multiple silver, gold and platinum discs. I think the only collection I saw of similar size was that old woman a few years back.

But I had a commercialism / idolization epiphany (plus a lack of space) around 2005 and I've been shinking it down ever since. I've sold off nine tenths of it. My collection is now a little corner in my study, with all the CD's, books and a few sentimental items from Prince or certain events (eg, SOTT gold disc, signed stuff etc).

It was liberating giving up collecting, and I went back to what is was all about. The music. My digital vault is full of nearly every note in the purple universe and that's all I ever needed.

When I sold off the rarest stuff, I spend the money taking my family all over the world. Those memories are priceless.

I used to collect everything . . . had all the albums, every magazine he was in, concert T-shirts, etc.

I got rid of the magazines (including the Uptown magazine collection) and T-shirts, got rid of the VHS tapes (didn't have a VCR anymore), got rid of the vinyl (they weren't in great shape at that point anyway). I got rid of the gold-box CD and the black-tin Batman CD. I gave away the tour books and Sacrifice Of Victor book. I gave away the 21 Nights book but kept the CD.

I mostly only kept the album/single CDs and digital downloads.

Since Prince died, I have added two tambourines and half a dozen books that have come out.

SquirrelMeat said:

When I sold off the rarest stuff, I spend the money taking my family all over the world. Those memories are priceless.

I like it!

My collection is out of control and disorganized, and probably 1/3rd unlistened to. I need to hire librarian.

Kinda reverse like most folks. My collection started as mostly digital and I started getting heavy into vinyl the last 2-3 years. At first I started with trying to get original/promo copies of albums singles I could get but it became bothersome cause sometimes ebay descriptions be lying LOL. Just recently copped Royal Jewels, which to date is my most expensive copy.

ufoclub said:

My collection is out of control and disorganized, and probably 1/3rd unlistened to. I need to hire librarian.

I'm available.

With Prince or any other artist I liked, I only bought what I enjoyed, and what appealed to me. Prince was my favorite artist, but I didn't go crazy, and buy everything the man made, just the stuff I liked.

looby said:

With Prince or any other artist I liked, I only bought what I enjoyed, and what appealed to me. Prince was my favorite artist, but I didn't go crazy, and buy everything the man made, just the stuff I liked.

My girlfriend in the mid-90s used to joke that I had every sneeze or cough that Prince had ever recorded LOL.

Pre-iTunes, pre-Napster, etc. she drove around our area to buy singles/soundtracks/etc. that I didn't have as a Christmas present. I still have the CDs, but moved on from her!

looby said:

JD123 said:

I'm 12" vinyl only. I don't care about coloured vinyl at all, but I'd like to have everything available to listen to on vinyl. I've got a pretty good collection, but there are some that are just out of my price range and it drives me mad! Exodus!

I love this because to me vinyl is like the original and best. Sounds amazing, you're lucky.

Not much at all.

I have all the studio albums digitally, a good amount of soundboards (pass on audience recordings) and the majority of his live concert recordings.

But I listen to my music on random.