The Brazilian businessman buying up all the world’s records has put in an offer for the Birmingham shop selling its stock for £1 a pop

He really is trying to buy all the records in the world.

Zero Freitas has become the world’s most famous record collector overnight. Featured in a New York Times interview earlier this month, the Brazilian bus magnate is described as “buying up all the world’s vinyl records”, his multi-million strong collection bolstered recently by the recent acquisition of two of the largest collections around – that of million-record man Paul Mawhinney and the late Music Man Murray.

On the other side of the world, just a few days after the interview was published, Dan Reddington of legendary Birmingham record shop Reddington’s Rare Records announced that he was putting his entire stock of close to 75,000 records up for sale at £1 a pop, regardless of rarity or value. Go figure… What happened next somehow seemed too obvious to be true.

As reported by ITV, Zero Freitas has caught wind of Dan Reddington’s fire sale and put in an offer to buy every single record in his collection for a total of £23,000, with Zero’s New York buyer Allan Bastos confirming the offer: “I spoke with Mr Freitas and we are interested. The condition is that Mr Reddington does not take anything out of the stock and, of course, he has to cancel the (public) sale.” (Due to take place on Saturday 6th September.)

With unprecedented interest in his collection drawing collectors from all over the world, Reddington has been reluctant to countenance the bulk offer. Speaking of the options he said: “The offer’s still in my mind, but I think I have to stay loyal to all my regulars… These people are collectors, dealers and such. We are loyal to all those folk and like to look after them with some good bargains. This guy, I think, wants to monopolise.”

He continued: “Mr Freitas may have some of the world’s rarest records but, as I said previously, buying in that amount of bulk isn’t true collecting” before adding, “Now if he was to say £1million I’d take it all back – you can dream.” [via ITV]

Pending further developments, the Reddington’s Rare Records closing down sale will open to the public at midday on Saturday 6th September. In the mean time, anyone looking to shift their records should know who to call.

Photo: Sebastián Liste/Noor, for The New York Times