At 5 p.m. yesterday, the time when he said he was going to close the door to his Record-Rama Sound Archives forever, Paul C. Mawhinney was busy doing the same thing he'd been doing for decades.

He was selling an album to a customer.

A short while later, however, Mr. Mawhinney turned the key in the lock at his shop in the Pines Plaza Shopping Center in Ross, denying further access to what he calls "the world's largest collection of sound recordings."

"I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the whole industry," said Mr. Mawhinney, 68, who has owned and operated his record store in four Pittsburgh locations, including a store over the post office on McKnight Road and the original shop on Route 8 in Etna.

"I'm frustrated. Broken-hearted. I can't make money at it anymore," he said, his voice betraying more bitterness than sadness. "Why are there three record shops in this city when there once was 167?

"I loved this business. But 15 years ago, the industry started dropping out from the independents and going with the mass merchandisers, Best Buy, Circuit City and Wal-Mart. And those three places sell CDs below cost. My cost from a distributor is $12.97. They're retailing them at $10.99."

Because of that, Mr. Mawhinney said, he quit buying compact discs in 2002. He sold his collection of 300,000 CDs in the past few weeks.

The rest of his collection -- including half a million albums, more than a million 45s, and thousands of cassettes and eight-track tapes -- is now behind locked doors. Most of the singles are in mint condition, having never been under a phonograph needle.

Mr. Mawhinney, who started his massive record collection 41 years ago, is headed into retirement with intentions of caring for his family. His wife, Collette, is having knee-replacement surgery this morning, and he has had two strokes that have slowed him down. He's also legally blind, wearing a magnifying glass around his neck so he can read the fine print on the records he cherishes.

He said he tried to find a new home for his records, but one potential buyer went bankrupt and another, responding to an eBay auction, turned out to be bogus. He shopped the collection around to museums, but there was little if any interest, and no one wanted to pay him anything near what he believes it to be worth.

"The city could have helped by supporting this collection as a museum," he grumbled. "The Heinz History Center said they'd take [the records] by the local Pittsburgh artists, but I wouldn't split that out of my collection."

And so it sits, stashed on carefully arranged shelves until Mr. Mawhinney lines up a warehouse where it can be stored.

The glory days of his business, Mr. Mawhinney said, were only 10 years ago, when customers were buying copies of music in different forms. On any given Saturday, he said, he'd make $40,000.

"Now, on a Saturday, if I do $200 today, it's a miracle," he said.

He blames the customers as much as the industry. Young people care more about the convenience of their iPods than they do about the quality of the sound. And they aren't concerned about their musical heritage.

"Pittsburgh is such a famous city for music. Do you think anybody knows that?" he said. "They don't even know the artists. I go to their funerals and there's nobody there. Some of the people who wrote some of the grandest music that exists, and they don't even know who the hell they are."

Mr. Mawhinney said he wouldn't miss the business. And he certainly won't miss the music.

"I have enough music at home," he said. "And that's the part of it I love the most."