Secondhand Record Shop Near Me in Greenwich: Casbah Records

Casbah Records opens every day of the week from 10:30am to 6pm, so a Greenwich secondhand record shop near me search on a Sunday afternoon still ends with the door open. The shop sits at 320-322 Creek Road, Greenwich, London SE10 9SW, a short walk from Cutty Sark DLR station. It moved here in February 2009 after many years of trading at Greenwich Market, and it calls itself south-east London's premier independent record shop.

Before it had walls, Casbah was a stall. The business spent years selling records among the food stands and craft tables of Greenwich Market before it, in the shop's own nautical phrase, dropped anchor on Creek Road in February 2009. That market background still shows in the stock, which leans toward the kind of collectable, conversation-starting records that sell well to passing crowds, and in staff who, by the shop's own description, have the experience and know-how to talk records and films with anyone at the counter.

The owners describe the room as small but perfectly formed, with an interior that mixes Kensington Market, Paul's Boutique and the Chelsea Drugstore, and they add the wry hope that Casbah lasts longer than those three did. Expect a crammed, colourful space rather than a minimalist gallery. Posters, prints and memorabilia fill whatever wall space the record racks leave free, so the shop reads like a fan's bedroom scaled up to a two-unit storefront.

The genre list on the shop's website is close to exhaustive: rock and roll, rhythm and blues, surf, soul, prog, folk, rock, blues, reggae, jazz, Afrobeat, psychedelia, hip hop, punk, indie and electronica. The staff say their real specialities are classic 1960s and 1970s rock and pop, indie and alternative, soul and funk, and cult film and TV soundtracks. If you collect library music or soundtrack scores, tell the counter early, because that is the corner they know best.

The vintage arrivals the shop has posted give a sense of the standard. Recent finds included a Beatles In Mono 11-LP box set, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Harold Budd and Cocteau Twins' The Moon and The Melodies, Neil Young's Harvest and Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come. One highlight was a very rare UK first pressing of Nico's 1971 album Desertshore, in a lightly textured sleeve on the tan steamboat label. Records like that tend to leave fast, so a weekly visit beats an annual pilgrimage.

The detail that separates Casbah from almost every other London record shop is the 8-track cartridge. The shop says it may be one of the last in the city to stock 8-tracks, and it keeps listening facilities so you can actually hear one before you buy. For anyone who inherited a player from a parent, or who just likes the clunk of a cartridge sliding home, this is the reason to make the trip to SE10.

Alongside the vinyl you will also find new CDs, DVDs, books, comics and T-shirts. The shop sells framed and unframed prints too: vintage adverts, classic football team line-ups, and punk, two-tone and indie band posters, with more variants kept in store than appear online. The paper goods make Casbah useful for presents, and the shop also sells gift vouchers for any budget, which solves the problem of buying records for someone whose collection you cannot see.

On a normal weekday there is no queue, and arriving for the 10:30am opening gives you first pick of anything priced and shelved that morning. Record Store Day is a different story. For Record Store Day 2026 the queue began at 3pm the day before, the earliest start the shop has ever had. If you want a specific limited release, either join that overnight line or accept that the popular titles will be gone by lunchtime and come back the following week for whatever is left on the shelves.

The same Record Store Day season brought a visit from Olivia Dean, a Grammy winner and one of the event's brand ambassadors, who chose Casbah to record an interview about why record shops matter. The shop also changes its square front window with each season. The spring 2026 display was built around classic reggae records and 1970s two-tone memorabilia, with a 50th anniversary screening poster for The Harder They Come as the centrepiece.

There is no ticketing system or appointment book here. You browse, you ask, and the people behind the counter, who the shop says love to talk about music and films, will happily pull related titles from the shelves. The shop invites anyone after a record from its online vintage roundups to send a message first, which is the sensible move if you are travelling across London for one specific pressing. Casbah also sells part of its collectable stock through its Discogs page.

Seasonal sales are where bargain hunters should focus. In the late summer of 2025 the shop cut hundreds of new and second-hand titles to half price, and its blog announces each sale before it starts. The shop is open to film crews too. It takes bookings for promo videos, TV links and film shoots, so if you see a camera crew blocking the racks on a weekday, that is the reason, and the staff will usually tell you when the room will be clear.

Graham, who writes for the shop's seasonal blog, tells a story that sums up the Casbah approach to collecting. In 1976 or 1977 he was handed a charity record by a Hare Krishna devotee on Oxford Street for 50p. Decades later he bought a mint original of The Radha Krishna Temple album on Apple from a Dutch dealer, and he found the two records sounded very similar. One had cost 50p, the other £50.

His takeaway was to collect records with a story attached rather than chasing every first pressing. It is a useful frame for browsing here. Instead of hunting a checklist, pull out the odd label sampler, the pop-art sleeve or the soundtrack you half remember from a late-night film. The shop's staff picks lean the same way, mixing new indie releases such as Snocaps and Cut Worms with reissues of overlooked artists like Connie Converse.

Creek Road links Deptford with the centre of Greenwich, so a record run fits neatly into a riverside day. Walk east toward the Cutty Sark, the restored tea clipper in its glass dry dock, and continue into Greenwich Market, the covered market where Casbah first traded. From there, the slope of Greenwich Park leads up to the Royal Observatory and one of the best free views of the City and Canary Wharf skyline.

If the weather turns, the National Maritime Museum at the foot of the park is free to enter and makes a good dry stop. On a sunny Saturday, skip lingering around the Cutty Sark itself, where the tour groups bunch up around the ship. Head back toward Creek Road instead, where the streets are calmer and you can drop your records at home base before dinner.

Casbah Records, at 320-322 Creek Road, London SE10 9SW, is open Monday to Sunday from 10:30am to 6pm. The nearest DLR stop is Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich, Greenwich station has National Rail services, and buses 188 and 199 run from central London to Greenwich. The shop opened on Creek Road in February 2009.

Bring a tote bag, because the bins are deep and the 12-inch stock is heavy. Weekday mornings are best for slow browsing, and Saturdays are busiest when Greenwich Market draws crowds. If you are after something particular from the shop's online vintage posts, message ahead rather than turning up on spec, since the best pressings rarely stay in the racks more than a few days.