Pitchfork

If you dropped the ball on Valentine's Day last week, here's one way to make it up to your sweetheart: prove your love to the tune of a nice little gift called THREE MILLION RECORDS.

No need to scour the nation's thrift shops and bargain bins for these, though. A Pennsylvania man by the name of Paul Mawhinney is auctioning them off-- all three million of them-- on eBay right this very instant.

The self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Music Collection" will set you back at least a cool $3 million (hey, that's just a dollar a record!) and it contains, well, what sounds like pretty much anything of relevance (and non-relevance) released over the last century or so.

"Every genre of American music is represented," declares the auction's website (yes, the auction has its own URL). "Rock; jazz; country; R&B; blues; new age; Broadway and Hollywood; bluegrass; folk; children's; comedy; Christmas, and more. No other collection in the world-- publicly or privately held-- even comes close."

This hobby gone completely mad includes CDs, plenty of vinyl, and duplicates galore, and apparently "more than half" of this stuff is brand new. Mawhinney has been stockpiling the goods for some sixty years now, but has been forced to sell due to "advancing age, declining health, and associated financial concerns."

Hopefully your "sweetheart" is "a museum, library, university, or charitable foundation, or...a philanthropist interested in purchasing the collection and donating it," because those are the kinds of well-intentioned buyers Mr. Mawhinney is seeking.

Hey, it's no Velvet Underground acetate, but 3,000,000 records should make somebody out there pretty happy.