[h=1]Rock Aficionados Try to Spin Old Vinyl Into Gold in New Investing Track[/h][h=2]Disc Junkies Also Hoard Odds and Ends For Fun; A Bathroom's 'Soul' Makeover[/h]
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David Kasnic for The Wall Street Journal Record collector Craig Kallman in a recording studio in his Manhattan apartment.
As investments go, fine art and precious metals are nice. But Craig Kallman prefers vinyl.
Crammed into 14 rooms at a climate-controlled Manhattan warehouse where auctioneers including
Sotheby's BID -1.08% store art, and in the Upper East Side apartment he shares with his wife, Isabel, and their 10-year-old son, Mr. Kallman has about 750,000 records, 100,000 compact discs, and 1,000 rock T-shirts (alphabetized, so he can find AC/DC or ZZ Top quickly). Not to mention a smattering of Beatles lunchboxes, Blondie store displays and KISS trash cans.
[h=3]A Music Mecca in a Manhattan Apartment[/h]
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David Kasnic for The Wall Street Journal This Blondie store display is among the many music-memorabilia items displayed in Craig Kallman's Manhattan apartment.
Mr. Kallman, the 48-year-old chief executive of Atlantic Records, may be the world's leading investor in rare records and the associated odds and ends of rock 'n' roll culture.
While global financial markets are volatile and savings accounts yield next to nothing, Mr. Kallman continues putting his money in music. A 1977 vinyl single by the Sex Pistols that Mr. Kallman bought 15 years ago for $1,000 would now fetch around $12,000, according to popsike.com, which publishes rare-records auction results. But most of his assets don't appreciate as much as he appreciates them—like his oversize belt buckles from Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd or the sneering posters of the Clash, which serve as wallpaper in Mr. Kallman's "punk" bathroom.
"Some people retire to their gardens, or vineyards, or to the beach," Mr. Kallman said one recent evening, after a hectic week that had him up listening to music at 6 a.m. and coaching musicians past midnight. He says he is planning to spend his old age cataloging the collection. "It's going to be an exciting job for retirement," he says.
For people who grew up during rock 'n' roll's 1960s-to-1980s heyday—the "golden age of vinyl," music historian and collector Jeff Gold calls it—rock memorabilia is as legitimate a collection as rare coins, stamps and first editions. Some of these vinyl junkies now occupy the highest ranks of America's business, government and art worlds, spending big money on the countercultural bric-a-brac of their youth.
Fashion designer John Varvatos, 57, a friend of Mr. Kallman's, has squirreled away thousands of records, CDs and concert fliers, along with top hats from rockers Alice Cooper and Slash. But his stash isn't nearly as large as Mr. Kallman's. "I'm jealous," Mr. Varvatos says.
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William Lie Zeckendorf, a prominent real-estate investor along with his brother Arthur and a devout Beatles fan, heads a group of New York audiophiles, including Mr. Kallman, who host play dates to listen to records on high-quality stereo equipment. The parties get raucous: Mr. Zeckendorf, 54, once blew up his friend Andrew Rahl's sound system by playing a rare copy of an album by Detroit punk group the Stooges too loud. "There was a flash of light, a huge bang and smoke," says Mr. Zeckendorf.
"Even a little bit of fire," Mr. Rahl, a partner at law firm Reed Smith, chimed in. "It's not the only time it has happened."
Mr. Kallman, who started his career as a DJ in New York, decided long ago to collect two copies of every important pop-music record ever made—a DJ's version of Noah's ark.
A decade ago, he added memorabilia, filling a closet with rock and hip-hop T-shirts, a move that proved somewhat controversial in the Kallman household. "There was supposed to be room in there for my boots," Mr. Kallman's wife says. He filled it with knickknacks. "You can wear designer clothing, thousands of dollars of Prada or Gucci, but I get more comments when I wear a vintage T-shirt," Mr. Kallman says.
Now at the helm of Atlantic, part of Warner Music Group, the world's third-largest record company, after
Vivendi SA's
VIV.FR -0.38% Universal Music Group and
Sony Corp.'s
6758.TO -3.62% Sony Music Entertainment, Mr. Kallman relies on dealers around the country to scour the globe for treasures like a colorful 1979 Parliament-Funkadelic poster he just installed in a guest bathroom dedicated to soul and funk. "The bathroom is totally full now, so I'll have to rotate things," he says.
Mr. Kallman doesn't know the overall worth of his collection, but some pieces may be worth six figures. "I don't care about value," he says. "To me it's about creating a time capsule."
Thanks to collectors like Mr. Kallman, the market for vintage vinyl and music memorabilia is booming. While annual sales of rare U.S. records are relatively small—about $10 million, compared with $10 billion for art, according to Collector's Universe, a firm that authenticates high-end collectibles—prices are climbing. "It's all about diversification," says David Hall, the company's co-founder, who says collectors see records as an "emerging" market.
A signed copy of the Beatles' 1967 "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, which experts say fetched several hundred dollars in the 1980s, sold at a Texas auction in late March for nearly $300,000. In July a lock of Rolling Stones' singer Mick Jagger's hair sold at British auction house Bonhams for about $6,000. "People are looking for places to put their cash with interest rates so low," says Stephen Maycock, an entertainment collectibles expert at Bonhams.
For Mr. Kallman, investing in music isn't just about building a museum or protecting his savings: It's good for business. After wearing a rare Run-DMC T-shirt to a meeting with rapper Rick Ross, whose label recently moved to Atlantic, the two ended up playing one-on-one basketball the rest of the day. Classic rocker Neil Young, who has long bemoaned the low quality of digital music files, also has visited Mr. Kallman's shrine. "Craig [has] a true love for music," Mr. Young says.
Mr. Kallman's home has become a reference library for musicians, producers and cover-art designers looking for ideas in an increasingly digital age. One nonfan of his vinyl collection is his son Ryland, who takes after-school classes at Scratch Academy, a New York school that teaches people to DJ. The son uses a MacBook instead of a turntable and has no interest in records. "Nothing I try to do is taking," Mr. Kallman says.
He is having more luck using the collection to help lure clients for Atlantic. Last month, Mr. Kallman signed a new artist he is very excited about, Max Frost, after a meeting with the 20-year-old in his apartment. "Nobody had prepped me for the abyss of vinyl I was about to step into," says Mr. Frost, whose own record collection includes stacks of wax by Cream and Jimi Hendrix. "It was like visiting the Yoda of music."
Write to Neil Shah at
[email protected]
A version of this article appeared July 24, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Rock Aficionados Try to Spin Old Vinyl Into Gold in New Investing Track
