The Vinyl Resting Place

The Vinyl Resting Place is a three-partner record booth inside the Mercantile in Allen, Texas. The compact shop carries roughly 3,000 pre-owned records, plus cassettes, CDs, a few turntables, bargain bins, and handmade items repurposed from unsellable vinyl.

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Interview with The Vinyl Resting Place

The Vinyl Resting Place is a great name for a shop — how did you start booth M15 inside a larger space is its own kind of operation, different from a standalone storefront.

Thank you - The name works very well as a draw for our shop, but also a great descriptor for the unsellable vinyl I acquire that I repurpose into all manner of record collector accoutrements. In reality we’re a three-headed brand; TVRP is mine, and my two partners, Kobi, brands as Quasar Records and Jake under Deadman’s Wax. You’re right though, it’s a very different operation. For starters, It’s tougher to carve out your own brand in a see of small business owners and side-hustlers all trying to get shoppers attention - it’s a huge place, they have like 150 booths there. That said, we are only one of two booths there dealing vinyl. The upside to having a booth is far less overhead - the Mercantile staff keep tabs on our booth so we don’t have to be present every day. They give us access to inventory software for bar-coded pricing with real-time sales data. For that, they charge a very reasonable rent and a small percentage of each sale. The downside is we don’t get to talk records with our customers - we all miss that aspect.

In your own words, what's Vinyl Resting Place actually like, and how did you land on being a booth rather than a shop?

Our booth is basically a mini-record shop, with most of our 20x10 space filled with roughly 3000 pre-owned records. Just like a standalone shop, we have our main tables of Rock, Pop, Soul and R&B mostly from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Within those are sub-genres of Punk, New Wave, Prog., Indie. We have a New Arrivals section and tangential genres like Country, Jazz, Classical and Soundtracks. We have several Bargain Bins and additionally sell Cassettes, CD’s and a few turntables. It’s sorta like “Honey, I shrunk the Record Store”. We got together as vendors at record shows, started sharing tables at them, and became friends. I’m the old dog of the group and I got sick of lugging my crates to record shows, burning my weekend and such, so I approached Jake and Kobi about setting up a booth at the Mercantile. Though we’d all have preferred a stand-alone shop, none of us had the appetite for the overhead. They agreed and we started small in 2025 with a 10x10 space. It went so well that after a year we expanded to a bigger, better spot and well, sales continue to slowly climb.

Allen sits in the Dallas suburbs, and 2033 W McDermott is a specific spot — what else is in that space around you, and for someone driving in from Dallas or Frisco, what makes the trip worth it beyond the booth itself?

Allen is a great town, but the Mercantile is on its southern border to Plano and there isn’t a lot in the immediate area. That said, we’re technically the only record store in Allen, which is great for the locals. But the drive up from Dallas is worth it because we’re sandwiched between two other great shops: Red Zeppelin in McKinney (11 miles north of us) and Josey Records in Plano (4 miles to the south). One drive, three digs. More importantly, the Mercantile has something for everyone - bring your wife and kids and they’ll have unlimited shopping while you could spend hours digging our bins. Rarely can you say that about a standalone shop - record shopping at a store is usually a solo outing, right?

Being inside a larger vintage/antique space means you catch two crowds — the people specifically looking for records, and the ones who wandered in for something else. Who ends up buying, and what surprises you about who converts?

You’re right, we do have a very distinct customer bases, but I really think of it as three groups. The staff tells me often of bewildered (mostly) men walk right up and ask “where are the records (or vinyls)?” or “Is this the Vinyl Resting Place?” A second group are those just shopping there (it’s like a massive Etsy store) and come upon our booth (which sticks out among the candles and clothes). Curious, they wander in and leave with a Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack or Fleetwood Mac in their cart. A third group comes from word of mouth. Middle-aged woman are 70% of the Mercantile’ s shoppers and most never set foot in our booth… but they tell their husband or their brother or son or daughter just getting into vinyl.

On the buying side: what genres do you actually want, and what do you have to say no to more often?

This is another thing that makes our booth’s inventory unique. Each partner has unique genre’s we’re personally interested. I lean toward late 70’s to late 80’s Rock, Pop with particular interest in New Wave and Alt./College Rock. Jake likes anything obscure, not just rare LP’s, but unusual: this might be an obscure artist, vinyl or even the album cover itself – World music for instance is of particular interest to him. Kobi is our Soul and Jazz guru. Many times he picks up collections where the LP’s are a complete mystery to me, but nonetheless valuable. He’s our ‘collectibles’ aficionado. This diversity when we buy leads to a diverse and unique selection of music when they hit our bins.

And the flip side — what quietly turns out to be worth more than sellers expect? Something they'd almost throw in the free pile that you're always happy to see?

Three albums come to mind, all from the late 70’s – The soundtracks to Grease and Saturday Night Fever never seem to last very long in our bins. Another surprise is Frampton Comes Alive. Though very popular 50 years ago, I never thought they’d have this kind of staying power. Unless they are Jazz, Pre-Rock n Roll records don’t sell… with one exception - Frank Sinatra. His records from that late 40’s/early 50’s seems to always have an audience and is the only consistent selling records prior to 1954. This may have more to do with our customers than anything else.

In a booth setup, space is genuinely tight — that has to change what you're willing to bring in. What condition and format constraints are stricter for you than they'd be for a bigger shop?

The booth is very tight, but I feel like our layout maximizes the space. Everything marketable (desired artists in VG or better condition) goes in our bins for flipping – meaning like a rolodex, while the bargain bins are side-stored like books at the library. Our bargain bins have decent records in them, but you’ll have to work a bit to find them. The ‘good stuff’ is easy to see and find on our tables. As mentioned, I repurpose unsellable vinyl and one of those creations is a shelf (The Vinyl Ledge) that mounts on our back wall. Like record shops often do, this is our Wall of Fame – higher end, collectibles or just pricey records. We even have a ‘Misfits’ bin with discounted LP’s that are: partially damaged (but playable), missing their cover/sleeve or covers missing the record, missing one record of a double LP etc. – you get the idea. And we generally have two sales a year where the whole booth is reduced by 20% for a month to free up some bin space.

What's the wildest single record or small collection that's come through the door at the booth?

Knowing we were going to open a booth, I ramped up my acquisitions to make sure I had the inventory. One collection I bought during those month before the booth launched had a ‘Butcher Cover’ among it’s roughly 300 LP’s. Obviously, that one I kept for my collection. And the first year we opened, Kobi bought a collection from a former concert promoter of Club Clearview – a legendary Dallas (Deep Ellum) nightclub for 1980s and 1990s alternative bands. That haul had numerous promo’s, MoFi releases and hard-to-find 90’s pressings.

Last updated: 2026-08-26

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