Not on the league of the above gentelmen nevertheless I thought I'd share my story.
One of my life time ambitions was to to visit one of these shops in the USA you'd heard stories about and just get my fingernails sore..The buzz of not knowing what the next record will be keeps ya going when your having a bad day.
My only trip to the USA was a holiday to St petes beach so off I jogged along to Banana records, expecting a small shop I came across this large wharehous full of 7" soul vinyl, I nearly came in my pants...the top man told me a few rules and away I went shoping basket in hand.
It dawned on me after 30mins that I needed a plan as I was all over the place, it was all in artist order so I decided to do The Major Lance, The Hyperions, The Hestitations, The Brooks Bros etc etc a simple task of remembering records was difficult due to the addrelain rush .. 1 found umm ummm ummm that was about it. just kept walking round looking at batchs of 200 records within tens of 1000's of the bleeders, found a few bits nothing rare, but the buzz of finding what I did was great. I then looked at my watch...fookin hell I'd been in there for 7 HOURS!!! I told my mrs Id be gone 2hrsMax..
Cashed in when he advised me that "his store had been hit so many times by the english its a wonder anything is left" cheer mate...lol "would you like to come back tomorrow and have a look through our unopend boxes we have in the basement, noones been through them for years"
cya tomorrow mate...
Got back to the Hotel Old Bill with the wife, she thinks Ive been murderd etc..."how did you get on" " 80 odd, going back tomorrow for another day"
I spent 9 hrs oepning box after box after boxm my finger nails were bleeding and only found one copy of Shirley Ellis on Candadia CBS... you wanna know something I will never sell it. it was a glorius two days of record hunting though the rewards rare wise were nowt special the satisfaction of knowing "I'd done it" made up for it.