For many reasons I have been thinking about death a lot recently.

And in relation to Prince.org - specifically what happens to my Prince collection after I die.

Like many Prince fans I am in my 50's and still appreciate my collection.

There isn't anything incredibly rare in it but if the whole lot is sold now it would hit a four figure £ total, probably £2k-£3k.

Needing money isn't a motivating factor here at all.

The collection, mostly old Vinyl (80's & 90's) and CD's (80's onwards) are boxed in standard protective DJ cases and CD boxes respectively, and are in excellent condition.

Some of the items are still unopened.

BUT none of them are in use. I have ripped all the CDs to FLAC and have a really great sound set-up for both IEM listening and stereo speaker listening.

So there is no need (or time in my life) to ever access them.

It is all essentially stuff that I have to find space to store.

And now I find myself debating both sides of the keep / sell quandry.

In 30 years time, if I am lucky enough to still be alive and compos mentis, will there be market for this stuff?

My guess is that collectors are a diminishing group.

I love my Prince collection, but it is just stuff.

The music will be with me until I've gasped my last breath.

Then it will just be stuff for my kids to either guilt trip themselves into keeping or a burden to try and sell.

Neither of which I want.

So the point of my post - is wondering what other Prince fans are doing and what their reasons are for keeping or selling.

And perhaps I might glean some wisdom from someone's post and thoughts on the issue.

I hope you are all safe and well.

Thanks for reading. And for those of you that do, thanks for replying.

P.S sorry about no line spaces - I have no idea how to do them.

ThePersian said:

I love my Prince collection, but it is just stuff.

That's exactly how I felt.
I sold my entire music collection (not just Prince) a few years ago. The main reason was I moved to a small city centre flat and space was at a premium. Other reasons were simply other life changes at the time.
I went the ebay route. It was a lot of work and took many months, but it felt good and I was then able to invest in some things which at that point in my life were more important than piles of media which were gathering dust.
Selling some of the things was difficult, I was approaching fifty then and had been collecting music on and off since my teens, but in the end I didn't regret it.
Like you I have Lossless rips of everything I wanted to keep, and I now find listening to and collecting digital far more convenient.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Indeed, I had the same thoughts about my collection (4 k€ worth: mostly from my framed Jeff KATZ pic).

I have gone a different road - I looked at all items, and for those where I had no particular memory of the songs and no emotional effect like "gee, I bought this in New York" or "didn't we dance to this like crazy" I threw out (some of it I sold, some of it just went to the garbage).

Now, altough I mostly listen to high-res straming services nowadays, for everything of my physical collection remaining, I sometimes randomly look at it / take it into my hands, and memories come back. I doubt this would be triggered by a screen list of records stored just in digital format.

And of course, my Prince collection remained

[Edited 4/26/23 7:54am]

Lately I’ve been considering what to do with my Prince physical collection too. The difficulty is it is split with my brother, there’s probably the odd rarity in the 100’s of CDs, LPs and 12” records but unlikely anything mind blowing. I already sold The War CD for 10 times what I paid in the early 00’s, after ripping it of course. But I rarely if ever touch or look at any of it, so it may be time to pass it onto someone who will. If an SDE comes out this year, I doubt I’ll even buy a physical version, just a digital version I can download and backup.