Home Grown: The couple who have been collecting records for nearly 40 years

Because every record collection has a story.

Home Grown is our series profiling you lot and your excellent record collections. Taking our cue from the brilliant submissions to the #VFRecordCollections thread on Instagram, we want to share a little of your hard-earned love for vinyl with the world.

Each week, we’ll be profiling a different collector from around the world and finding out what makes them tick. Want in? Send us a pic and a few words about your collection to [email protected]

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Name: Mark Barton and Clare Simmons

Location: Somerset, UK

# of records (approx.): Somewhere between 3000 and 3500.

How long have you been collecting for?

For me, since buying ‘The Land of Make Believe’ by Bucks Fizz in ’81. And Clare’s been collecting since buying The Queen is Dead. The Bucks Fizz 7” is long gone, thank god, but the The Smiths LP is still in the collection. It’s missing one part of the inside gatefold, which Clare, as a teenager, cut out and stuck to her wall.

What part of your set-up are you most proud of?

The DIY shelving. (Our hi-fi setup is very modest at the moment, and nothing to write home about.) We’re currently at 98% capacity, so we’ll have to start thinking about adding a new wing quite soon.

What record(s) are you most proud of?

I don’t think we feel any sense of pride about any individual record; nothing in our collection is massively rare or valuable. The collection as a whole, however, does make us incredibly proud as it’s something we’ve both invested close to 40 years in.

What does your record collection mean to you?

It’s a lovely thing to own – amazing to look at, satisfying to touch, fun to listen to, and a treasure trove of memories. Each record transports us back, either to where we bought it, or to a time in our lives when we listened to it a lot.