Welcome to Volver Records
We're a record shop on Mercer Island, WA, founded in 2024 by John Packer with one simple goal: music discovery. Real, physical discovery. The kind that happens when you're flipping through a crate and a cover catches your eye, or when the person behind the counter says, "You need to hear this."
That's what we live for.
Our Story
Volver Records started because we believed something was missing. We wanted to build a place where the thrill of finding something unexpected could happen every single visit. A shop where the inventory itself tells a story, where every record on the shelf earned its spot.
John, Luke and Casey run the store together, and all three of us are out in the world sourcing records. We take buy trips across the globe, digging through warehouses, markets, and private collections to bring back pressings you won't find anywhere else. Test presses, white label promos, regional variants, rare imports: the kind of stuff that makes a collector's heart beat.
What We're Known For
We carry vinyl across genres, but we've built a particular reputation for our depth in Japanese music. If you're into city pop, Japanese jazz, rock, or electronic music, you'll find things here that are genuinely hard to track down stateside. Our shelves reflect years of relationships with sellers and collectors in Japan and beyond.
Beyond the Japanese section, our inventory is deeply curated across the board. We're not trying to stock everything. We're trying to stock the right things, the records that deserve to be heard and held.
Who We're Here For
We serve the young and the young at heart. Seasoned crate-diggers who know exactly what they're hunting will find rare pressings and collectible editions worth the trip. And if you're just getting started with vinyl, picking up your first turntable, building your first shelf of records, we're here to help you find your way in without any pretension. Everyone starts somewhere.
A few things that make shopping with us a little different:
- We accept trade-ins for store credit, so your collection can keep evolving.
- Our customer wantlist tool lets you tell us what you're looking for. When we find it on a buying trip or it comes through our door, we'll let you know.
- Our Mercer Island shop is a real place worth visiting. Come hang out, flip through records, talk music with us.
What Keeps Us Going
We're not a warehouse. We're not a faceless online storefront. We're three people who love records, running a shop for people who love records (or are about to). Every buy trip, every new arrival, every conversation with a customer who found exactly what they didn't know they were looking for: that's the whole point.
Thanks for being here. We'll see you!