The Wagner and the theatre thread has been overrun by the likes of, er, me  talking about their favourite record shops. I seem to remember some lovely stories at tOP on the subject. Perhaps we might like to revisit them or tell new ones here?

Agreeing with mentions of the Paris FNACs on the Wagner thread. I can happily add Dussmann in Berlin - a glorious place and one of the best I know anywhere for the possibility of actually listening to what you're about to buy.

I used to like Vincents' in Needless Alley ,Birmingham. I discovered it in 1971 and it was still going in the early '80s.I think it closed mid-eighties.

It was a very old-fashioned shop.They didn't play records and you couldn't browse. All the stock was on shelves behind the counter,so you had to ask for what you wanted.  Butthe two chaps who ran it (Brian and an older man whose name escapes me) were wonderfully knowledgeable and happy to chat about Karajan v.Klemperer, Curzon v.Rubinstein,  for hours. A geat place to hang out, a survivor from a more elegant age.

 They probably had pretty low cash turnover,though,a bit like those ironmongers where you coulld buy 6" nails individually and they would wrap them for you.

I used to live in Derby when I was a student there so I remember when MDT were actually a shop, annoyingly (for me as a poor student) about 1/2 a mile from where I lived!  That shop was always very organised but now I actually prefer disorganised shops to well organised ones.  There is one in York called The Lamb CD shop and it is fairly well organised but it has the feel of an old, rambling bookshop.  The same is true of the one in Chester, near the city walls.
Lynn and I visited the Classical CD exchange in London last year - what a treasure trove!  I'm just waiting to have another chance to visit (and go to Harold Moore's as well again)
Back to work now 

Have you found Amazon Marketplace useful before?  I had my first-ever success with them recently, after about 3 years of listing obscure wanted-to-buy items (admittedly more scores and sheet-music than disks).  I finally managed to get a VHS video of the Lindsay Kemp MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - worth the wait

anyone remember The Classical Music Shop in Nottingham?
those were the days...

Oxford c1972, Charles Taphouse & Co still with listening booths, Russell Acott  (sp?) and of course Blackwells still in its marvellous underground glass structure in Longwall St (standing sad and empty last time I passed, when my oldest daughter was still 'up').

And a small independent, name long-forgotten, in George St, near its opening onto St Giles, where I collected quite a few discoveries: e.g. the Weller 4tet's Haydn Op 33, now worth a few £££, and perhaps most inluentially Janacek 4tets, the Classics for Pleasure disc by the 1963 eponymous quartet, licensed from Supraphon. It seemed like the licensing agreement had ended and many such discs were available for less than £1 as deletions. One of my happy memories of the latter establishment is of venting my enthusiasms to a fellow-customer, oblivious to the fact that he was buying everything I recommended! I didn't have the nerve/ capitalist acumen to ask the owner for commission . The disc I remember recommending mst heartily was Janet Baker's 'Pageant of Englsih Song' (HQS 1091, still to hand on my shelves...

Oh yes, Garon Records near Magdalen Bridge and then in the Covered Market. OOh, the smell of the market coffeee shops and delicatessens! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/ But to be young...Aye, there's the rub...

Hmm, no takers for Oxford 1972 so how about Winchester 1970-c2000 and Whitwams at the upper end of the High St, just below the Westgate? Oh, my grief when it closed... It was particilarly nice in its latter years in that the main man in the record section was one of the cathedral lay clerks, an alto I think. My shelves still groan with the many treasures, CD and LP, purchased there.

Also a large piano warehourse, long gone, near the Square that had a goodish records dept c1970. Its name escapes me. I bought two of my first three full-price LPs there, the Silvestri In the South, Tallis fantasia and Wasps overture, and the St Johns/Guest Argo recording of Palestrina Missa Assumpta est Maria and Missa brevis. Sheer bliss 

Modern CDs just don't have the same magic somehow  . Time to join the Grumpy Old Men

i was in that lovely eccentric Gramex on friday (lower marsh street) : at present the shop is overflowing with stock.
The latest consignment was obtained from a guy who collected thousands of CDs but never played them(there are some strange people around)-apparently the wife forced him to sell everything or she`d leave. These pristine discs (without cases but meticoulosly filed) are going for #3 each.