Kym Cournoyer of Portland flipped through cartons of old vinyl LPs Saturday at the WMPG Record Sale at the University of Southern Maine’s Sullivan gym.

She had already extracted some Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder and jazz albums and was riffling among the thousands of other vinyl records on sale.

Vinyl has made a comeback in the past decade as compact discs faded away in the age of internet streaming and satellite radio.

“We are buying back all the records we sold at yard sales 20 years ago,” said Cournoyer, a baby boomer. “We thought we would never play them again.”

Cournoyer and hundreds of other shoppers spent hours poring over tens of thousands of phonograph records, CDs and audio equipment for sale at the WMPG’s 23rd annual sale. The community radio station – on Bedford Street on USM’s Portland campus – airs radio shows with the help of about 200 volunteer disc jockeys and talk show hosts in program slots featuring a hodgepodge of topics and musical genres.

Michael McCormack and Erica Indiano, who both just moved to Portland from Nevada, look over their finds.

The event begins with a big push when doors open at 10 a.m. and shoppers race to dig through the cartons of $2 records, all donated to WMPG. The sale raises between $5,000 and $10,000 for the station, said manager Jim Rand.

Shoppers come from all over New England, some of them dealers looking for hidden gems. Dealers also sell their wares at the event.

Dave Perry, a dealer from Lowell, Massachusetts, said he became a regular buyer and dealer at the WMPG sale about 15 years ago, before vinyl became popular again. He said it is still one of the few places in the country where “you can walk in a strike gold for $2” an album.

Perry managed to scoop up more than a dozen finds Saturday, including a DJ copy of Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy,” which he expected would fetch close to $100 in his shop. His other finds included “The Carpenters Live.”

Vinyl enthusiasts search through boxes of albums Saturday at the WMPG record sale at USM Sullivan Gymnasium.

“I have no idea about that one,” Perry said.

Ray Masters of Biddeford was at the sale to buy a turntable for his living room, which he has transformed into a vintage radio station, circa 1980, to relive the days before he traded in his job as a disc jockey to become a desk jockey in the insurance industry.

Masters, who was a DJ at several southern Maine radio stations, found a turntable from the 1970s, still in its original box. He also unearthed an album by Robert Ellis Orrall, whom he described as a one-hit wonder from the 1980s.

“I just couldn’t say no,” Masters said.

Masters said he is amused when he returns to the University of Maine in Orono, where the fraternities are blasting out music from his college years in the dying days of disco.

A vinyl enthusiast searches through collections Saturday at the WMPG Record Sale.

“The Top 40 today all sounds the same,” he said.

Rosie Beak of Alameda, California, who was in Portland visiting her boyfriend, said that as a member of millennial generation, she is always looking to build on the vinyl collection she inherited from her parents.

“I love shoveling through piles of stuff,” said Beak, who bought albums by the singer Buck Owens and the group Poco, which both have California roots.

Related Stories