After 60 years of collecting records, my treasures are mostly gone.

I have been paring down the stockpile for two decades now, weeding out marginal stuff and keeping only what I savored. Namely, precious LPs by Elvis Presley and the Beatles, who’ve been my all-time musical favorites, first as a fan with a mounting hobby, then as a reviewer of pop music for this paper.

Easily, 95% of my discs have now left the building.

My record-buying started with breakable 78 rpms, and moved on to large hole-in-the-middle 45s and yes, the reliable vinyl-is-final 33-1/3s. Of course, CDs, too.

Millennials and those younger should ask kupuna what these numbers mean.

Age is a factor in my decision to unload, but my wife has been advocating downsizing for years. After all, you can’t possibly listen to everything you have. I bought a compact turntable at Target, a decade ago, so I could occasionally put on a recording, since my original “stereo” console and a smaller unit with two speakers became obsolete. But truly, I possessed way too many recordings.

My interest began when I was a teen; I started buying records when KPOI introduced youth audiences to pop music. (Thanks, Uncle Tom Moffatt.) I first started reviewing music for my high school paper, then for a youth-produced tabloid in the Sunday Advertiser, and eventually as an entertainment columnist-journalist for The Honolulu Advertiser till my retirement in 2008.

It’s not easy to discard the soundtrack of my life. I had a 78 rpm single of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.” And at least six LPs autographed by the original Beach Boys, including Brian Wilson. And singles and albums by everyone from Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka, who wrote most of their original hits, to chartbusters from the Monkees to the Rolling Stones and duos from the Carpenters to Sonny and Cher. Oh, there have been domestic supergroups like the (Young) Rascals, Chicago, the Byrds, the Four Seasons, Earth Wind &Fire and Crosby, Stills &Nash, plus the British invasion crowd — the Kinks, Chad &Jeremy, Herman’s Hermits and the Animals. My collection also included prolific musicians, too — Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Elton John, Barry ­Manilow, Lionel Richie and Carole King.

And the beat goes on: I had everything from rock to country, jazz to folk, blues to ­Hawaiian, movie soundtracks to Broadway cast recordings. Along the way, there were a few curiosities, like Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki,” the only Japanese ditty (original title, “Ue o Muite Aruko,” or “I Look Up as I Walk”) to top the domestic and global charts, and Mrs. Miller’s dubious, daffy and off-key “Downtown.” (Sorry, Petula Clark.) Remember?

A bedroom became a warehouse for these discs. When the shelves got full, the discs wound up in boxes on the floor. Lots and lots and lots of boxes.

I daresay I had amassed between 10,000 to 12,000 discs over time, including the short-lived 4- and 8-track formats (first to go) and yes, cassettes. Do you recall reel-to-reel product? I had ’em, too, along with a mammoth player.

It’s painful to eliminate things that touched your heart or captured a spirit of the moment. With the current downloads, you can’t hold the music, or read the liner notes, or drop the record onto a turntable, or frame an LP cover as a piece of art. Inconveniences are blessings, too.

But I couldn’t simply pack up boxes without strolling down memory lane. While inspecting disc after disc, I’d forgotten about a few memory-makers. I had a beat-up LP by Frankie Lymon (leader of the Teenagers) who was in town for a Show of Stars staged by Uncle Tom at the long-gone Civic Auditorium; he had autographed his album. An interview I did with him, while still in high school, had run on Page 1 in The Advertiser, so this was a heartbreaking memory; he died at age 25 of an overdose of heroin. It also wasn’t easy to say aloha to composer-maestro Harry Owens, who wrote “Sweet Leilani,” who had entertained at the fabled “Pink Palace” of The Royal Hawaiian hotel back in the day.

Many 45s were 99 cents each early on, and less than $2 later, and the high-profile artists, like the King of Rock and the Fab Four, nearly always boasted sleeves or jackets with colored photos in hopes of luring prospective teen collectors. Since I retained some LPs of these superstars from separate eras, it was no sacrifice to pass ’em on to prospective collectors. I did save one Presley single, “Jailhouse Rock,” which featured “Treat Me Nice” as the flip side, because The King signed the single with a keeper of a message, “Loving You, Elvis Presley.” (The signature was secured through the kindness of Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s manager, while EP headlined at the old Las Vegas Hilton in his heyday.)

I still have a few Michael Jacksons, and, yep, my Bruno Mars. It would be sacrilegious to discard the cast recordings of “Les Miserables” or “Hamilton.”

Some friends advised me to sell a selective bunch of these discs via eBay for maximum profit, or through an oldies agent, but that’s too much of hassle.

In decades past, I’d load up the car and head to the swap meet. But now, it’s no fun to undertake the physical rigors of this option.

So I sold ’em, at clearance prices, to Ward Yamashita, proprietor of Hungry Ear ­Records, now at Salt at Our Kaka‘ako, through an earlier relationship when the used-record dealer was based in Kailua. I’m gratified the discs are in good hands and stewardship. But I know that these oldies will bring joy and jostle some memories, in the hands of new owners. It’s part of the cycle of life. …

And that’s “Show Biz.”

Wayne Harada is a veteran entertainment columnist. Reach him at 266-0926 or wayneharada@gmail.com.