The Saga of Mingering Mike

A couple weeks back, a post on metafilter linked to a message on a board for record collectors. The crux of the story is that one of the board's members had discovered an entire collection of hand-painted "record" albums, complete with cardboard "records" and lyrics. All had been done by the same mysterious person: Mingering Mike.

The artwork, though *naive*, was fairly incredible, and each record had its own imagined stories and bandmembers and release dates. (Sadly, the original thread, with all the photos of the artwork, was taken down, but you can read more about it here.)

Here's where the story gets even more interesting: the guy who found the Mingering Mike records managed to find him. You can read all about it in yesterday's Times.

Now there's the question of ownership, and if the collection is sold, who profits? The guy who originally found these records seems like an upright guy, so we'll see. Ideally, I think the American Visionary Art Museum is the perfect place for such a collection. I could see Ricco and Maresca drooling over the collection as well.