Paradise Found Records & Music

Paradise Found Records & Music took over the space long known as Bart's Records on Pearl Street, and the shop still carries that old-Boulder record-store feel: new and used vinyl, CDs, cassettes, turntables, speakers, and posters, with the stock changing day to day. Genre range runs wide - jazz, soul, reggae, blues, rock, punk, country, folk, bluegrass, hip hop, and ambient all get shelf space.

They're active buyers, not just sellers: used records and CDs are purchased regularly, they'll arrange in-home pickup for larger collections, and they provide appraisals for estate sales - useful if you're clearing out a relative's collection rather than just trading in a stack. They'll also special-order records or CDs that aren't in stock. The shop is open seven days a week and ships online orders for collectors who can't get to Pearl Street in person.

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Interview with Paradise Found Records & Music

The Pearl Street Mall is genuinely one of the great American walking streets — buskers, the mountains at the end of the block, the tourists and the Boulder locals. For someone visiting the shop, what else on Pearl or the west side is worth their afternoon?

Liberty puzzles is located three blocks eat of us and is one of my favorite stores in the country. They make the coolest puzzles using wooden pieces in many different shapes. They have worked with us on two custom puzzles. Great people, great puzzles, and great business. The Boulder Bookstore has been around since the late 60”s and is everything you want in an independent book store. We also have 9 outdoor clothing/ equipment stores on Pearl street including Mont Bell’s only US retail store. Patagonia, Stio, and Himali are other great outdoor stores worth visiting. For food my favorite restaurants are Hapa , Sherpa’s, Pizzaria Alberico and Bacchetta’s Pizzaria.

Boulder's a very specific music town — CU crowd, the tech transplants, the older Front Range community, the outdoor culture that shapes what people put on when they're back from a hike. What does the Paradise Found regular actually look like, and how has that shaped what you stock?

Our customer base has changed so much over the past ten years . When I first bought Bart’s 101/2 years ago the average customer was a man over 40. Now , our customer could be anywhere between 10 and 80 with as many women as men shopping in the store. It’s been great to see the change.

You've been direct about the pricing math — Discogs median as the guide, pay 1/3 of hoped sell price, so a $30 record gets a $10 offer and a $1,000 collection gets $333. That's more transparent than almost any shop I've talked to. What made you commit to explaining it that plainly?

In selling my own records over the years to different shops there seemed to be no clear answer as to what my records may be worth or why. We wanted to be up front with people about what they could expect and it makes it easy for everyone. Of course we factor in condition of the albums, pressings, and how many we might already have. The best part of the arrangement is that the customer has the final say. We also try to turn them around quickly so people have access to the money they need.

Big band, classical, Reader's Digest box sets, moldy/poor condition — that's your no list. What made those specifically the pass, and how do you have that conversation when a seller shows up with a stack?

We do buy classical, but we are picky. The main reason we set it up this way is because those items don’t interest many customers. In a smaller store ( about 1.500 square feet of retail space) you really need to focus on items that most people are interested in. The conversation with customers is easy as we let them know what items we aren’t interested in when they bring them in. The best part of these unwanted records is that most customers don’t want these records either and donate them to the shop. We then put these “passes” in our free box outside the store for people to grab for free. We don’t throw any playable records away.

Store credit +20% over cash is your structure. When someone's weighing the two at Paradise Found, what's the honest case you make for taking the credit?

The honest case is that if you are going to use the money you get for your records to buy more records , then you should take the credit. In our shop the split is about 50/50 cash versus credit. When I first bought the business ,I remember worrying about a steady stream of used records coming in. I soon realized that used records are another form of currency in a sense, and that people always need more money at certain times of the year. Getting used vinyl records has not been the challenge I initially thought it would be.

You actively buy from estates and downsizing homes — that means you see a lot of full-life collections. What have you learned about that kind of buy, and what's the wildest estate collection that's come through?

Going to people’s houses to look at people’s collections is one of my favorite parts of the job. I learn a lot about people during our time together that gives me a better idea about their musical interests and I I always hear some great stories. The biggest takeaway has been that all of our stuff that we acquired over our lives means so much more to us than it does to others . With that said I want to make sure I don’t burden my family with a bunch of stuff they don’t want. Wildest estate collection? We bought an amazing collection with over 600 Japanese pressings and over 400 Mobile Fidelity pressings. I would say about 500 of those albums are now in my collection!

Expanding online with rare collectibles is on your near horizon. When someone's trying to decide whether to sell to Paradise Found or list a rare record on Discogs themselves, what do you think they underestimate on each side?

I am all about selling records to customers in our shop and only sell online through Discogs if a record doesn’t move in the store. We encourage people to sell their stuff online if they are looking for money and have plenty of time. Most folks we deal with are looking for money immediately and don’t want to wait weeks or months to get it.

Last updated: 2026-09-29

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