I have vinyls, and they are just stored on a shelf - Can't really say which are the favourites, but it's mostly ebm, industrial and so, so they're in a way all favourites. It was also what I got first before actually having a cd player, so they're very dear to me

Ooh Indy!
Starts in about 5 hours too!
Hope you have fun tonight and for your birthday.
Take care, nice to say hi to you Rye.

I keep my vinyl in a plastic crate. They should be keep on their sides, not stacked one on top of the other.

How far is Sparta from us? Sounds like you have some nice things planed, I hope you have a really nice weekend and a great birthday.

I use to have a really nice collection of old records, I still have a couple, but most of my good ones were badly damaged when my house burnt down. Have you ever been to that record shop in Cincinnati? all he pretty much sales is records.

They make polyethylene sleeves to protect the cover art, and a variety of cardboard or plastic boxes for storage. The main thing, as was mentioned earlier, is records need to be stored in a vertical position to prevent warping. If you want them to last, it's also important to get a decent turntable with a good cartridge, relatively light tracking weight and an elliptical or preferably hyper-elliptical stylus (needle).

You need to clean records regularly before playing - dust particles love to hide in the grooves. The best cleaning tool in the past was Discwasher, but from reading recent reviews on Amazon it sounds like what's now being sold as Discwasher is kinda crappy. I still have my old high-quality Discwasher, so I haven't needed to look for a new one, but here's an ad for an Audio-Technica cleaner that appears to be pretty good: http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/av-accessories/m/10253771/

Cleaning is critical because when you play a record that has dust (often invisible) in the grooves, many of those particles get ground into the vinyl, causing permanent damage.

In terms of a receiver, keep in mind that most models currently sold don't have a phono input, and those that do, apart from the high-end stuff, tend to have a low-quality phono pre-amp. The hot ticket is to get a separate phono preamp with good audio specs, which can be paired with most any receiver. My system is an inexpensive Sherwood RX-4105 stereo receiver (which actually has very good amplifier specs) combined with an inexpensive TCC TC-750LC phono preamp that has great specs.

There are some inexpensive turntables with an onboard phono preamp (and usually a USB interface for connecting to a PC) - don't know about the specs, but that's another possible option.

I know it sounds like a lot of trouble and work, but once you get decent equipment and develop a routine for storing, cleaning and playing, it all becomes second-nature.