Twelve West Eighteenth Street in Manhattan’s Flatiron District does not look like much from outside, but inside sits one of New York City’s longest running stops for anyone who still wants to flip through crates rather than scroll a streaming queue. Academy Records and CDs has operated its flagship location here since 1977, which puts it at nearly five decades in business and makes it a genuine survivor of multiple format shifts, from the vinyl era through the CD boom and back to vinyl’s current resurgence. The shop deals almost entirely in used media: vinyl LPs, CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays spanning rock and pop, jazz and funk, R and B and soul, and classical and opera, alongside a curated selection of deluxe box sets and premium film labels such as Criterion and Kino Lorber, plus a film section running from classic cinema and film noir through documentaries.
What keeps serious collectors coming back is less any single rare find than the store’s consistency and organization. Academy Records is known among longtime shoppers for keeping a clean, well organized, and comfortable browsing environment rather than the chaotic overstuffed bins some used record shops lean into, and the staff actively buys collections for cash or trade credit, which keeps the sell through stock genuinely fresh rather than picked over. The location itself is part of the draw: sitting between Union Square and Madison Square Park and reachable by an unusually wide spread of subway lines, including the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, N, R, Q, and F trains, it functions as an easy midday or after work stop for Manhattan office workers and a destination trip for collectors visiting from out of town.
Academy Records and CDs is open seven days a week, with hours running from noon to 7pm on Sunday, noon to 6pm on Monday, noon to 7pm Tuesday through Thursday, and noon to 8pm on Friday and Saturday, giving shoppers a wide window to browse without needing to plan around a narrow weekday schedule. The store maintains an active presence on Discogs, Instagram, and eBay for collectors who want to check inventory or watch for specific titles remotely, and staff can be reached directly by phone at 212-242-3000 or by email for anyone looking to sell a collection rather than buy one.
For crate diggers, soundtrack collectors, and cinephiles alike, Academy Records and CDs remains a Flatiron District fixture precisely because it has kept doing one thing consistently since 1977: buying and reselling well curated used vinyl, CDs, and film media at fair prices in a shop built for actual browsing. That combination of nearly fifty years of operating history, genre depth across music and film, and a central, transit accessible Manhattan address is what makes Academy Records and CDs a first stop for used record and film collectors visiting or living in New York City.
