This is one event we shouldn't even bother blaming on digital downloading, given the fact that compact discs couldn't stop Jerry's Records.

It's just the rising cost of doing business and a little fatigue that finds Jerry Webber putting his landmark store on the trading block after 30 years in the business and 12 in the current Murray Avenue store.

Webber has posted the "for sale" sign on the store's Web site (www.jerrysrecords.com), hoping a buyer will come along and preserve the Squirrel Hill warehouse of more than 1 million records.

"The overhead is killing me, man," says the 58-year-old owner and collector. "With the gas and the rent and salaries, by the time you get done, realistically, there's nothing left. I could make as much money sitting in my kitchen trying to sell records, without paying $10,000 a month in overhead."

Webber has three options for potential buyers: $400,00 for the business and inventory; $333,000 (as in 33¹/₃) for the business and LPs; $90,000 for the half-million 45s.

"I don't think anyone is nutty enough to buy the place," Webber says. "They wouldn't buy it for the money they'd make, but to do it for the love of it."

Jerry's, which is exclusively vinyl, is one of several stores here that makes Pittsburgh a destination for record collectors, along with Record Rama in Ross and the Attic in Millvale.

Webber says that another option is that he could downsize Jerry's Records and split the space into three or four like-minded businesses that would share rent and utilities.

"If all else fails," he says, "you're going to see the greatest record sale you've ever seen. I'll start at 16 percent off, then 33 percent off, then 45 percent off. If we get to 78 percent, we're really in trouble."