Meet the New Yorker with 40,000 records and a $10 million African art collection

Eric Edwards’ collection will put yours to shame.

You know things are serious when you can barely watch TV for all the wood carvings between your sofa and the screen. Profiled in a moving short documentary that filmmaker Mark Zemel hopes to be the first in a series on collectors of all stripes, Eric Edwards has spent his life collecting everything from baseball cards, comic books and toy trains to autographs and exotic audio equipment, as well as of course, records.

Lining the walls of his Brooklyn apartment which has been transformed into a treasure trove of archival proportions, Edwards estimates he owns about 40,000 LPs, not counting his significant collections of 45s. However, as it turns out the records were only the beginning.

Amassing some 1,600 African artefacts over forty four years, Edwards hopes to share his collection – worth an estimated $10 million – with the world, and open what the Cultural Museum of African Art in Brooklyn. [via Wax Poetics]

Watch the fantastic short film below:

The Collector from No Problem on Vimeo.