If you like buying old vinyl, you better put on some diapers.

Cousins Vinyl, a Plymouth-based ebay store for rare vinyl, has recently opened a real-life dollar store to help clear out their warehouse, and it is awesome.

Cousins Vinyl is run by two real cousins, Justin Anderson and Geoff Meyers.  They collect records like fiends, buying entire collections from people.  Then they weed through the collections and sell the valuable stuff online (prices start at $12).  What do they do with all the stuff that isn’t worth $12?  Up until now, they just stored it in their warehouse.  But now they’re making it all available, and instead of pricing individual records like most stores, they’ve just made everything a buck.  Easier for them, great incentive for you.

The store is just a small room down a long hall in an unmarked office building (that was once a bicycle factory), full of cardboard boxes of unsorted records, and they’re adding more to it every day from the warehouse.  Of course, they’ve already weeded out stuff that’s worth big money, but to a guy like me who just wants good albums on vinyl, I can’t believe my good fortune to find My Aim is True, Mary Wells Sings My Guy, Super Session, and countless other great records for only one dollar. 

See those boxes?  Every one of them is filled with records. 

On Thursday, when I asked how business had been so far, Justin told me, “Great!  We’ve had someone come by every day,” which tells me their expectations are pretty low.  However, with vinyl sales on the rise and CDs becoming increasingly passé, it seems to me that the store is opening at a perfect time (and with a perfect price) for a wider appeal than just hardcore collectors.

Here’s the address, but let me warn you - you may not find it unless you call, so write down the phone number too.
Cousins Vinyl
13101 Eckles Road (the white building in the back of the lot)
Plymouth, MI 48170
(734) 968-0019

Even if you don’t go to the store, check out the Cousins Vinyl blog.  They share mp3s from a lot of the rare gems they find, especially local ones.  Past posts include novelty songs about the Tigers, Ypsi classics like “Back to Ypsilanti,” and more mainstream local finds, like David Ruffin’s first 45 before he joined the Temptations. 

So let’s recap: a store with great records for a buck, and a blog with rare records put to mp3 for free?  Thank you Cousins Vinyl!