Do you collect vinyl? This collector's collection may give many people complexes

This Man Has Over Eight Million Vinyls And Still Can't Get Enough. Zero Freitas' story shows that collecting can become a lifelong goal. Literally.

Every music collection starts with the first record. In the case of José Roberto "Zero" Freitas , the head of a Brazilian bus company who is best known for owning the largest record collection in the world , it was the album "Canta para a Juventude" by Roberto Carlos . He bought it as a teenager in 1964.

It is also important to learn to love music at home. As a boy, Freitas saw his father bring a new hi-fi set with 200 records into his home in São Paulo . Soon after, he discovered his mother's private collection of some 400-500 records. That's how it all begins...

Cover of the album Canta para a Juventude by Roberto Carlos / photo: promotional materials

By the time he was 17, he already owned about three thousand records. By the time he was thirty, his collection numbered 25,000 to 30,000. At first, he kept them at home, but when he ran out of space, he moved the collection to a warehouse in western São Paulo .

Passion is just a few steps from obsession. Over time, Freitas became obsessed with expanding his record collection. He began placing ads in Billboard magazine, offering "more than anyone else" for entire record collections, regardless of the genre.

Importantly, he did not contact collectors personally, but sent his employees, maintaining anonymity during the purchases.

After 2010, he acquired, among others, the 200,000-disc inventory of Colony Records in New York's Times Square , the legendary Music Man Murray archive from Los Angeles, and the collection of Paul Mawhinney , the founder of the Record-Rama store. The latter includes three million records, which had to be transported on eight semi-trailers.

"Zero" also accepted collections from older collectors. Rumor has it that they included 15,000 records of polka music.

Freitas' collection now includes over 8 million vinyl records and over 100,000 CDs , and covers virtually every imaginable musical genre.

His warehouse covers 2,500 square meters, with shelves reaching to the ceiling. Freitas hired a team of interns to fully catalog the collection.

Importantly, "Zero" doesn't want his collection just for himself. In 2014, he filed papers to transform his warehouse into Emporium Musical , a nonprofit sound library. The goal is to make his collection publicly available, as well as digitize it for future generations.

Mr. Freitas … Maybe you could send a few duplicates to Poland, to Krakow… I will take good care of them…