My name is Terry and I have a problem. The problem takes up one wall of the spare bedroom, a closet, and lately part of the hallway, and at last count it was 2,014 long-playing records. My wife counted. She has opinions. I have been buying records since 1974 and I never stopped, not when the record stores put the LPs in the back, not when they put them in the basement, not when they put them out on the sidewalk in a box marked "50 cents." Especially not then.

This page is for the other people who never stopped, and for the few of you who are just starting and don't know yet what you're getting into. I'll tell you what I know. Most of it I learned the hard way, which is the only way anybody learns anything about records.

People ask me why I don't just buy the CD. Here is the short answer: I own a CD player. I use it in the car. That is what it's for.

The long answer. A record is a physical thing. A groove was cut into it by a machine, and a diamond rides in that groove and turns wiggles into music, and the whole business is so simple you can explain it to a child, which I have, several times. Nothing about it is a secret. When it sounds good, and it does sound good, it's because a lot of people did their jobs right in a room somewhere thirty years ago. To my ears, and I'll admit they are 47-year-old ears, a good pressing on a decent table is warmer and easier to listen to for an evening than the same music on a disc. You can argue with me by e-mail. Many have.

And the jacket. Twelve inches by twelve inches. You can read the liner notes without a magnifying glass. You can see the photograph. The record album, as an object, was designed by people who assumed you would sit down and hold it. Nobody has ever sat down and held a jewel case except to try to get the cellophane off.

Also: you can buy a record for a quarter. Try that with a CD.

It is a golden age for buying records, and I mean that seriously. Everybody is getting rid of them. Everybody. Here is my strategy, which I have refined over 25 years and which my wife calls "driving around on Saturday."

Garage sales. The number one source. Rules: go early, but don't be the guy who knocks on the door at 6:30 a.m. Look for the older neighborhoods, not the new subdivisions (nobody in a house built in 1996 has records). Ask "do you have any records?" even if you don't see any, because they're often still in the house and the seller forgot. Bring small bills. Do not haggle over a quarter; it's undignified and they'll remember you. Do haggle over a box of 200 — offer a flat price and take the whole thing, and sort at home. The good ones pay for the bad ones.

Thrift stores. Slow but steady. The trick is frequency, not luck. I have two I stop at every Wednesday on the way home because that's when they put the new donations out. Nine weeks out of ten there's nothing. The tenth week pays for the year.

Estate sales. The best condition you'll find anywhere, because the records belonged to one careful person who played them on one turntable for forty years. Also the most competition. There's a fellow in a green truck I see at every one. We nod. We don't talk.

The last record shops. There are still a few used shops around, run by people like me who are worse off than me. Prices are higher, but the records are already sorted and graded, and you can talk to somebody who knows things. Please buy something. They will not be there forever and then where will we be?

Flea markets, church rummage sales, library sales. Yes, yes and yes. The library sale is a sleeper — classical and jazz donated by professors.

Collectors grade records on a scale that runs from Mint to Poor, and everybody argues about it. Here is how I grade, in plain language. Grade the record and the jacket separately, always. And grade under a good lamp, not in a garage at 7 a.m.

Two honest rules. One: nobody has ever undergraded a record they were selling. Two: a visual grade is a guess; a play grade is the truth. If a shop will let you play it, play it.

Every record that comes in my door gets cleaned before it goes near the turntable. Every one. A garage-sale record has thirty years of somebody's living room in the grooves, and a dry brush just pushes it around. Here is what I do, and it costs about four dollars to set up.

1. A soft, wet record brush. The kind with a pad, not the kind with stiff bristles.
2. A gallon of distilled water from the grocery store. Not tap water. Tap water leaves minerals in the groove and then you've got a new noise.
3. One drop of plain dish soap in a cup of the distilled water. One drop. I said one.
4. Put the record on a clean towel. Wet the brush in the soapy water and go around the groove, with the groove, never across it. A few times around.
5. Rinse with plain distilled water, same way. Get the soap off.
6. Stand it in a dish rack to dry. Do not put it back in the paper sleeve wet. Do not use a hair dryer. Don't ask.
7. New inner sleeve. The old paper one is dirty and scratchy and it's done its job. Throw it away (unless it's printed; keep the printed ones with the jacket).

Keep the label dry if you can. Never use anything with alcohol on a shellac 78, if you ever come across those — it'll ruin them. And never, ever use the "wood glue" method somebody will tell you about at a flea market. I don't care if it worked for him.

You don't need an expensive turntable. You need a decent one that's set up right. Most of the "my records sound bad" complaints I get by e-mail come down to one of three things.

Tracking force. That's how hard the needle presses down. Every cartridge has a recommended range printed in its little instruction sheet, usually somewhere around a gram and a half to two grams. Too light and it skips and chatters and actually wears the groove worse, because it's bouncing. Too heavy and you're carving. Set it in the middle of the recommended range with the counterweight, and buy a little stylus gauge if your tonearm doesn't have markings. Don't tape a penny to the headshell. Your uncle did that. Your uncle's records sound like bacon frying.

The stylus. It wears out. It's a diamond, but it's a very small diamond riding a very long road. My rule, and it's the rule most people go by, is a new stylus about every 1,000 hours of play. If you play a couple of records a night that's roughly every two to three years. A worn stylus doesn't just sound dull, it damages every record it touches, so this is the one place not to be cheap. Write the date on a piece of masking tape under the platter when you change it. I do.

Keep it clean and level. Dust the platter. Brush the stylus (back to front, gently) with the little brush that came with it. Put a level on the plinth once. Keep it away from the speakers if you can, and off the same shelf as the footsteps.

Anti-skate, belt replacement, cartridge alignment — all real, all worth doing, and all a page for another day. Working on it.

I collect broadly, which my wife would describe differently. What I'm always looking for, in general terms (if you've got a box and you're not sure what's in it, write me and describe it):

• 1950s and early '60s jazz, especially the small-label stuff. Original mono pressings if I can get them.
• 1960s soul and R&B singles and LPs. Regional labels are a bonus.
• Late '60s and early '70s rock in first pressings. I've got a lot of these but I'm always upgrading condition.
• Country from the '50s and '60s, the honky-tonk end of it.
• Blues, anything, any era, any condition short of broken.
• Odd stuff: sound-effects records, spoken word, exercise records, orchestras playing pop hits, anything with a great cover. I've got a whole shelf of records I bought for the cover and I regret nothing.

Not looking for: the same six albums everybody in America owned in 1978. I have them. You have them. The thrift store has forty of them. They're fine records. I just don't need more.

August 14, a Saturday, second garage sale of the morning, a split-level with a two-car garage. A card table with a box of records on it, priced at a dollar apiece, and the first twenty were exactly what you'd expect. And then, about two-thirds of the way back, between an exercise record and a Christmas album, there it was. A first pressing of an album I have wanted for twenty years. I'm not going to name it here, because half the fun of this hobby is that nobody knows what you're looking for, and because the fellow in the green truck reads this page (hello). I'll say it's from the '60s, I've owned a later pressing since I was in high school, and the original has been at the very top of my want list since I found out there was a difference.

I checked the label. I checked the matrix numbers in the dead wax, with my reading glasses, standing in a driveway, trying to look casual. It was right. The vinyl was VG+ at least and the jacket was better. I paid the dollar. I did not haggle. I said "thank you" in what I hope was a normal voice and walked to the car at what I hope was a normal speed.

It's been cleaned, it's in a new sleeve, and I've played it four times. It sounds like I always hoped it would. My wife says I've been insufferable since August. That's fair.