I read the reviews of this place on Record Junkie  before I made the trip and quite frankly I was put off! Having had the negative experience of being kicked out of a record store in Berlin, diggers comments about this place sounded all to familiar. I didn’t even bother writing down the address but came across it by accident and my curiosity got the better of me so I thought I’d give it a go.

I was nervous from the outset, felt like the store guys were watching me! There was just such an overwhelming amount of vinyl in there, more than I’d ever seen in one spot. I didn’t know where to start. The other thing that made it difficult was that it was so tightly packed, you really had to get stuck in. One guy there asked if he could help me and I thought, this is it, he’s going to kick me out -  but he showed me to the section I was after.

I pulled out some good stuff over the hour I was there. Prices were decent. Eventually my arms got so sore I couldn’t lift them to hold rows of records back as a lot of good stuff was on the upper shelves, so I listened to some of my selections through the store speakers. This is always a little bit awkward I find, but the store guys were interested in my choices, even asking what some were. I don’t blame them, with all the stock in the store they can’t remember everything.

There were some real hard core collectors in there at the time. Flicking super fast, talking mumbo, holding scrunched lists of records. It was a cool place! Don’t be put off. You gotta check it out.

Record Collector, Lange Koepoortstraat 105 2000 Antwerp, Belgium