• Written by Rich McNabb • Proofread & Edited by Claude AI
Twelve places I actually buy from, big Auckland institutions, one-person operations run off a Facebook page, and a few worth knowing about for the rare stuff. What each is good for, and the shipping deals worth waiting for.
In July 2002 I sent a money order to the United States for a sealed TOOL Ænima 2xLP I’d found on eBay. USD $56, roughly NZD $160 at the time, arranged from my bedroom floor over a dial-up connection. I didn’t own a turntable. I didn’t own anywhere to put a turntable. That was roughly the point I realised I had a problem.
Buying vinyl in New Zealand takes more effort than it does most places. We’re a small market at the bottom of the world, so pressings sell out fast, shipping from overseas gets expensive, and the album you actually want is often the one nobody stocked here in the first place.
Over the years I’ve bought from nearly all of these, in-store and online. Some are huge operations, some are one person running things out of a Facebook page and a Google Sheet. Every one of them has turned up something I couldn’t find anywhere else. Here’s where I actually shop, what each is good for, and the deals worth knowing about.
✅ Offer points with every purchase, ✅ Free shipping for items over $100. New Zealand’s largest supplier of new and used music. Started in 1981 and steadily grown ever since, with a huge collection of hard-to-find and rare albums. A fair chunk of the music and reflection behind my collection started in a Real Groovy crate.
Founded by Chris Hart and Chris Priestly, it’s been an Auckland landmark for decades and has moved premises a few times along the way, most recently to Victoria Street West. Head up the escalators above the Woolworths Metro and you’ll find it at the top. Open seven days.
The scale is the point here. Very few shops anywhere carry this much stock, and they buy and trade as well as sell, so the second-hand racks genuinely turn over. Worth setting aside proper time if you’re going in person, an hour disappears fast.
✅ Free shipping for items over $120. A seriously good selection of hard-to-find New Zealand and international vinyl, plus plenty of rare pressings.
Based in Napier, and it’s a Hi-Fi shop with a vinyl room rather than the other way around, which shows in how they handle stock. Every pre-loved record gets personally checked and cleaned on a VPI cleaning machine, then goes out with fresh inner and outer sleeves. Small thing, makes a real difference when the package arrives.
Their specialty is rare LPs, particularly 60s and 70s New Zealand pressings, which are exactly the ones that never show up anywhere else. They’ll also source styli, cartridges and turntables if you need them.
✅ Free shipping for items over $100. Consistently some of the lowest prices in New Zealand with an impressive selection. True music lovers and great service.
This is essentially one person running the whole operation, and it shows in the best way. Orders get packed properly, often with free sleeves thrown in, and the communication from order to delivery is genuinely better than most larger retailers manage.
Constantly sourcing from overseas, so new arrivals land regularly. If you’re price-checking a new release across a few sites, this one is usually at or near the bottom.
✅ Offer points with every purchase, ✅ Free shipping for items over $40. A New Zealand independent record label formed in Christchurch in 1981 by music store manager Roger Shepherd.
Beyond their own catalogue they run a proper record shop with stores in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, covering new and second-hand vinyl, CDs and NZ music merch.
What I like is the staff picks, individually credited by name rather than an anonymous algorithm. If you find someone whose taste lines up with yours, their section becomes a genuinely useful shortcut.
Friendly staff dedicated to helping fellow music lovers find physical music. Great selection.
Dunedin based, established in 2013, and after twelve years on St Andrew Street they moved to a new home on George Street in late 2025. Relics HIFI came along in 2020, so you can sort out the records and the gear to play them on in one trip.
They use a proper grading system for second-hand stock and are upfront about condition, which matters enormously when you’re buying online and can’t inspect a sleeve yourself. They also run in-store album release listening events, which is about as close to the old listening station experience as you’ll get now.
✅ Use code 13thFloor10%off to get 10% off your purchase. New Zealand’s largest range of new vinyl LPs, accessories and a growing selection of second-hand titles. Some genuinely obscure finds in here. If I’m coming up empty elsewhere, this is a great place to check.
You’ll find them on Symonds Street in Eden Terrace, Auckland. Alongside the vinyl they carry a solid range of accessories, sleeves, cleaning gear, the practical stuff that’s surprisingly annoying to track down locally.
✅ Free shipping for items over $100. Kiwi-owned and established in 1934, Marbecks is New Zealand’s original specialist music store. Staffed by passionate music fans, it’s the oldest surviving record store in the country.
Ninety years is a genuinely absurd run for a music shop. They survived the shift from vinyl to cassette to CD and back to vinyl again, peaked at a two-floor store on Queen Street with forty staff, then scaled back after the 1998 Auckland power crisis knocked out the central city for five weeks.
They hold the last real classical department in the country, and the staff can source things nobody else can find. Some of their customers have been shopping there since they were teenagers and are now in their nineties, which tells you most of what you need to know.
✅ Have massive 20% off sales every once in a while. A solid place to find popular albums and build a collection. Because it’s a large retailer, harder-to-find albums can be trickier to track down.
Where they earn their place is the sales. The 20% off events are worth waiting for if there’s a new release you’re not in a rush for, and the savings on a stack of records add up quickly.
Being able to check stock at a physical store nearby helps too. Handy when you want something today rather than in four days.
The perfect place to find new and rare second-hand vinyl from New Zealand sellers.
Collections come up here that never reach a shop, someone downsizing, clearing out a garage, or selling off a parent’s records. That’s where the genuine surprises live.
The trade-off is that condition descriptions vary wildly. Ask for photos of the actual sleeve and the vinyl itself before bidding, and treat anything described only as “good condition” with healthy suspicion.
This one operates by his own rules. No online store (other than Facebook and a Google Sheet), though he’s well connected and can often get hold of titles well ahead of anyone else. Highly recommended.
This is the closest thing on the list to having a bloke who knows a bloke. No slick checkout, no automated stock feed, just a message and a conversation.
If you’re after something specific and everyone else is telling you it’s unavailable in New Zealand, ask here before giving up. More than once that’s been the difference.
Another good resource for hard-to-find albums, though prices can be high so it pays to shop around first. Shipping is either cheap or free depending on the seller.
Worth checking when something is genuinely out of print everywhere else. The listings pull from a wide network, so obscure titles do surface here when they’ve disappeared from every local shop.
Always price-check against a specialist store first. On common titles you’ll usually do better elsewhere, on the rare stuff it can be the only option going.
Music isn’t their core business, you can find a bargain occasionally though. Cheap shipping.
Because vinyl sits alongside games, books and toys rather than being the main event, pricing can be inconsistent in both directions. Occasionally that works in your favour.
Their coming soon section is the useful bit, handy for spotting upcoming pressings early and getting an order in before a limited run sells through.
Buying is the easy part now. Anyone can order a repress online in about ninety seconds. What stayed with me from those early eBay years was the rest of it, scouring listings, bidding, winning, narrowly losing auctions by a few dollars, and occasionally paying way too much for something I’d convinced myself I needed.
That’s why the smaller places on this list matter as much as the big ones. They’re run by people who know their stock and know their regulars, which is a completely different experience to a search bar. I still miss the old listening stations too, headphones on in the corner of a shop, hearing an album properly before deciding whether to take it home.
That sealed Ænima is still sealed, by the way. Bought for NZD $160 before I had anything to play it on, and last time I checked, a comparable copy was listed at just under US$2,000. Not that I’d sell it.
Once the vinyl starts arriving, the next problem is what to do with it all. I ended up cataloguing everything, building systems thinking prototyping into a custom Hi-Fi cabinet, and eventually putting fifty sleeves up the stairwell as design process side projects. If it’s the sleeve art pulling you in more than the pressing, I’ve also ranked the creativity and storytelling behind fifty of the most iconic covers ever made.
There’s usually something spinning while I work, too. A hundred days straight of a design challenge goes a lot easier with a record on.