Vintage music items have been a part of my life in many different forms for as long as I can remember. One of my favorite things to do is collect musical memorabilia (such as old radios, old magazines, trading cards from the bands I like, etc.), and to look at and display vintage vinyl records that I also listen to.

I can vividly remember the first time I bought a vinyl record; it was a hot, sunny, summer day in July of 2017 at a vintage store called Atomic Athens that is in Athens, Georgia. My mom, dad, twin sister, and I had just finished eating lunch, and since we had seen that there were some vintage shops near where we had eaten, decided we should go to some of them. So, we drove to one of the higher rated vintage shops in the area called Atomic Athens. I went in and looked around, and, as I was turning to look at the right half of the store, I saw a small stack of items sitting on a chair that were placed there for patrons to look through.  As I went through the stack, I discovered a vintage vinyl record titled, “That was the Week That Was: The British Broadcasting Corporation’s Tribute to John Fitzgerald Kennedy:  The BBC Telecast-Saturday, November 23, 1963”.  This record album was (and still currently is) one of my favorite vintage musical discoveries, as JFK is one of my favorite presidents.  I asked my parents if I could buy get it, and they said yes. From that moment on, my love for records has grown increasingly.

I love history and music, and one of my favorite vintage items that I’ve purchased that is important to history is a full set of Beatles vintage 1964 trading cards. This was one of my most exciting finds, and I remember just how ecstatic I was when my dad said he would by them for me. This past July my parents, my twin sister, my older sister, and I went to Orlando and Sanibel Island, Florida for vacation. On the second of 6 days in Sanibel we went to an antique store to look around. About 30 minutes into the shopping trip I saw these trading cards. I called my dad over and asked the owner, who was at the store’s vintage collectables counter, if I could see the Beatles trading cards in the cabinet next to the door.  He told us that the trading cards were in fact for the band The Monkees. But, after that he said that he actually did have some Beatles trading cards, that these trading cards were from 1964, and also that he could show them to me if I was interested. So, I said yes and he showed them to me. My dad asked how much they were, the owner told us the price, and also offered us a discount on it. Even though after the discount, the cards were still a little more expensive then we would have liked, my dad still bought them for me. For me one of the most wonderful things about collecting items form this era of music is that my parents are as nostalgic about them as I am.

Vintage musical memorabilia and vinyl records are some of the things I am passionate about. I enjoy vinyl records because they are the soundtrack to a bygone era.  I enjoy collecting vintage musical memorabilia because it tells the other half of the musical story in a different way.