A vinyl record collection worth $40,000 may sound insane to some people, but to Donnie Schachel, it sounds like heaven.

To further his love for all things vinyl, Donnie started his very own radio show on KALA-FM called “Bee-Sides with Donnie,” where he plays through a different album every show.

The premise of the show is to showcase the album being played fully, “It’s really geared towards the album,listening to it in its entirety, and hearing all those songs you normally would not hear because they didn’t get much radio play,” Donnie explains. “They made records to have both sides for a reason.” “Listening to vinyl really is an experience on its own, being able to take that experience and put it on the radio is a really cool thing.”

“Bee-Sides with Donnie” plays Friday nights at 10pm on KALA-FM radio.

Schachel’s spark for record collecting originally started in 2018 after a trip to the movies. 

“I went and saw Bohemian Rhapsody. I knew some Queen songs but not a lot, and after the movie I fell in love with Queen and classic rock. He went on to explain how deep his love for Queen went after discovering them. 

“For the first three months of 2019 I did nothing but listen to Queen’.” During this time, Donnie decided he wanted to start collecting. “I’ve always wanted to own the album art, so one day I said ‘I’m gonna get into vinyl’.” Donnie’s first vinyl was Queen’s self-titled debut album. 

As Schachel’s collection grew, he had to learn how to take care of it. He spoke about how he preserves his collection by putting the records in plastic sleeves instead of the paper sleeves that come with the vinyls. Another method he shared  is to go to a record store in Clinton, IA called “The Underground”  to get his records preserved.he store manager charges two dollars to clean them and put a plastic sleeve on. 

“I’ve gotten half of my collection cleaned by him so far. It really helps with the sound and it takes a lot of the static away, Schachel said.

After several years of collecting records, Schachel’s collection has reached a whopping 420! Each of these albums has been obtained in its own way, but one of Schachael’s most memorable stories of obtaining an album was how he finally got one of his favorites albums called Megadeth ‘Rust In Peace’. This album is one of the most sought-after thrash metal albums ever, and is also known as one of the best in the genre. 

He knew he would never find the record in a store, so he went to look at an app he frequents for buying vinyls, Discogs. Donnie was disappointed when he saw it was going for $400, he declared it out of his reach. . After chalking up the album as a loss, one year later Donnie got a Facebook message from the person that runs his favorite record store, about an original, unopened copy of Megadeth ‘Rust in Peace.’ After negotiating, Donnie ended up buying this album for $300.

 Donnie Schachel is a junior from Davenport, IA. He transferred from Scott Community College this fall  and is now a forensic psychology major. 

“I wanted to work more with people who have criminal minds,” Donnie said, and went on to explain how he wanted to  understand their minds well to be able to work with them.