Gavin Walsh

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Gavin Walsh
Nationality	Irish
Occupation	Programmer
Home town	Sligo, County Sligo
Known for	Music memorabilia collection
Website http://www.whaah.com/

Gavin Walsh, 42 is an Irish entrepreneur, non-fiction writer, world traveller and collector of rare music memorabilia.

Walsh bought his first record, a 45 by Jimmy Osmond titled 'Long Haired Lover from Liverpool' when he was seven years old. By the time he was fourteen he was addicted to the then revolution sweeping the nation viz. Punk Rock and more specifically the band that spearheaded the movement, the notorious Sex Pistols. He immediately became fascinated with cataloguing, collating and hoarding absolutely anything pertaining to the Pistols. In the intervening 28 years Walsh has amassed one of the world's finest rock 'n' roll collections both in terms of records and memorabilia

He spent his formative collecting years working three jobs six days a week to spend the seventh day travelling from his home town of Sligo to Dublin to purchase rare records. Then just as he was beginning to think his 'hobby' somewhat solitary and even weird, he spotted the fledgling Record Collector Magazine. Prior to this contacts were slowly and laboriously made via the classifieds on the back pages of the then Big-4 of the day: NME, Melody Maker, Sounds and Record Mirror. Now from the day he bought his first copy of R.C.M., things would never be the same. Over the intervening years Walsh built contacts with literally 1,000s of dealers and fellow collectors alike. Today his collection spans Abba to Zappa and almost everything in between. It currently represents in excess of 25,000 items and is rich in both aesthetic and monetary value.

In 1999 Europe's leading venue, The Royal Festival Hall's ran a six-week Punk Graphics Exhibition. After showcasing at the illustrious venue, the Exhibition found its way on a fourteen-month worldwide tour displaying in major cities, among them Frankfurt, Tokyo, San Francisco and Ottawa. Walsh was one of the main Exhibitors and represented the largest single-private contributor.

Over the past number of years Walsh has had three books published on his collection. Two went on sale internationally and one in Japan in Japanese. He has appeared on numerous radio and television shows in both the U.K. and Ireland. He has also featured on Australian and American television. His appraisals of old records and memorabilia are regularly sought on Irish radio phone-in shows. He has appeared in many newspapers for both his fascination with collecting and also his more wacky worldwide trips. In 2002 many of the tabloid newspaper had stories of his new "bomb-proof" vault. The vault was effectively a sealed concrete bunker which Walsh -then- used to store his more valuable pieces.

In more recent years he has taken some wacky trips among them ...

Deliberately taking a seat on the world's very first New Millennium flight - the one that was supposed to crash!

Flying on-board one of the first Zero-G flights out of the Kennedy Space Center.

The first person in the world to visit all of America's "Eleven Sligos" -in the summer of 2000 this trip took almost five weeks of driving traversing some 8,500 miles. In the subsequent years Walsh has re-visiting most of them a second time and some of them three times!

Visiting all of America's 50 states -driving to 49 of them, including a 10,000 mile round-trip north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska.

Travelled to more than 40 countries over five continents in search of collectibles ‘n’ craic.

Walsh currently commutes between his hometown of Sligo and Dallas, Texas spending an equal amount of time in each throughout the year. In addition to collecting and researching he is also an avid walker, swimmer and an aviation enthusiast –having accumulated several hours on many types of light and ultra-light aircraft (the J-160 being his favourite). He is currently working on his next rock 'n' roll collector's guide and the never-ending Foley-Reynolds Family Tree publication which his grandfather entrusted to him to complete. He has worked on this project for 22 years, albeit on and on/off basis. He hopes to bring this publication to completion this summer.

Walsh began collecting music memorabilia at age 14, travelling from his home town of Sligo to Dublin to purchase rare records and working in hotels to fund his hobby.^[1] He is "one of the largest record owners" in the world^[2] and, as of 2006, had amassed a collection of approximately 25,000 memorabilia items^[3] – up from roughly 20,000 in 2002-2003.^[1][4] The collection includes memorabilia related to The Beatles, Dervish, Madonna, and U2, among others,^[5] and contains around 1,100 posters, which Walsh has estimated to be worth as much as €1,000 each.^[1]

Walsh has travelled to at least 33 countries and makes use of a worldwide network of 6,000 people to expand his collection. In 2002, he ordered construction of a concrete bunker in his back-garden to hold his collection; the bunker is bomb- and earthquake-proof.^[1]

Walsh owns the world's largest collection of records and memorabilia linked to the 1970s punk rock group Sex Pistols:^[3] in 2002, it included roughly 11,000 items.^[4] He has also written two books about the Sex Pistols. In 2003, he published God Save the Sex Pistols as a "definitive guide" to "Sex Pistols memorabilia";^[4] two years later, in 2005, he published The Greatest Sex Pistols Collection.^[3] Walsh has published one other book, titled Punk on 45: Revolutions on Vinyl 1976-79, which explores album art on punk rock records in the late 1970s.^[6]

In 1999, the Royal Festival Hall took Walsh's collection on an international tour.^[1] In 2004, a portion of his collection relating to pop band Westlife were placed on display in Church Street Gallery in Sligo. The exhibit included items from 60 countries and rare items that even the band's members did not possess.^[5]

In addition to his collecting, Walsh operates an Internet firm.^[2]

[edit] Selected publications

• —— (2003). God Save the Sex Pistols: A Collector's Guide to the Priests of Punk. London: Plexus Publishing. ISBN 978-0859653169.
• —— (2006). Punk on 45: Revolutions on Vinyl 1976-79. London: Plexus Publishing. ISBN 978-0859653701.

[edit] References