"World's greatest" record collection garners fraudulent bid :: Music News :: Articles

Music collectors around the world took notice last week when an unidentified buyer purchased one of the world’s largest record collections for $3 million on eBay.

As previously reported, the collection belongs to 69-year-old Pittsburgh collector Paul Mawhinney. “The World’s Greatest Record Collection” is comprised of more than three million records and 300,000 CDs that took 60 years to assemble. The collection contains a number of extremely rare records, including 15 copies of Elvis’ Christmas Album and an unreleased, untitled album of early Rolling Stones singles.

Online bidding opened at $3 million on Feb. 11, and username jopsoup made the winning bid of $3,002,150.00 nine days later...or so it seemed. Mawhinney’s sales agent J. Paul Henderson announced this weekend that the winning bid had been a fraud, and that the collection remains in Mawhinney’s hands.

The fraudulent bid came to light when the man with the username received an e-mail invoice outlining the purchase, which he knew nothing about. The man contacted eBay to inform officials his identity had been stolen, and the jopsoup account was immediately suspended.

Henderson told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that Mawhinney plans to re-list the collection, this time in a more private setting with screened bidders, and also has several private collectors on the way to view the collection in person.

Thanks to Idolator for the tip!

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