Mafia III Collectibles Guide — All 3 Types & Locations

New Bordeaux rewards players who look past the main story. There are three distinct types of Mafia III collectibles scattered across the city's ten districts, and grabbing all of them unlocks trophies, achievements, and some of the best world-building the game has to offer. But here's the catch: none of these items appear on your in-game map by default, and several sit inside mission-locked locations you can only visit once.

Related Mafia III guides you may find useful:

• Mafia 3 Burke: Districts, Rackets & Best Ending
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• Mafia III Plot Explained — Full Story & All Endings That's why so many players finish the campaign with a handful of missing pieces and no clear way to find them. This guide breaks down every Mafia III collectible type, where they spawn, and the tools that make tracking them painless.

What Collectibles Exist in Mafia III?

Mafia III keeps its collectible pool tight and thematic. Instead of hiding 200 feathers or flags around the map, the game gives you 34 items split across three categories, each tied to the 1968 Louisiana setting.

The key detail: none of the three types show up on your in-game map. You either stumble onto them or use an external tracking tool. That design choice is the single biggest reason completionists get frustrated.

Playboy Magazines

The 12 Playboy magazines are the most talked-about collectible, and for good reason — each one displays a vintage centerfold and a short article when you pick it up. They're placed in interiors you'd otherwise sprint through: bars, motels, warehouses, and story mission locations.

A few of the trickier ones sit inside mission-exclusive areas. If you miss them during the mission, you may need to replay that chapter via the mission replay menu to grab them.

Hot Rod Magazines

Hot Rod magazines work almost identically to the Playboy set — 12 issues, all hidden in interiors, none marked on the map. The difference is placement philosophy. Hot Rod issues tend to appear in garages, mechanic shops, and areas tied to the car culture running through the game's side content.

Collecting all 12 earns you the "Custom Car" trophy. Community reports suggest several of these are easy to walk past because they blend into cluttered workbenches and shelves.

Album Records

The 10 album records are the collectible with the most mechanical payoff. Each record you find adds a track to Lincoln's in-game music player, meaning your collection directly changes what you hear while driving around New Bordeaux.

Where Are All the Collectibles Located?

New Bordeaux is divided into districts, and collectibles are spread across all of them. Here's how the distribution generally breaks down based on community mapping efforts.

Counts vary slightly in player-reported maps because a few items sit on district borders. Treat this as a planning guide, not gospel.

The Mission-Locked Problem

This is the single most important thing to understand about Mafia III collectibles: some items only exist during specific story missions.

If you complete a mission without grabbing the magazine sitting on the desk, that item becomes inaccessible in the open world. Your options are:

1. Replay the mission through the chapter select menu
2. Load an earlier save
3. Accept the miss and move on (not recommended for completionists)

Player experience consistently flags the following as high-risk missions where collectibles are easy to miss:

• Early racket takeover missions in Delray Hollow
• The Downtown casino-related story beats
• Any mission set inside a building you can't re-enter afterward

Pro tip: Before starting any story mission, check an external map for that specific location. It takes 30 seconds and saves hours.

How to Track Mafia III Collectibles Efficiently

Since the game refuses to mark collectibles on your map, you need outside help. Here's the practical workflow most completionists use.

Use an Interactive Map

The most popular solution is an interactive map tool that overlays every collectible location onto New Bordeaux. MapGenie's Mafia 3 interactive map for New Bordeaux is the standard choice — it lets you filter by collectible type, mark items as found, and track your progress across sessions.

Key features that matter for this grind:

• Filter by category — toggle Playboy, Hot Rod, or Records individually
• Mark as found — prevents double-checking locations you've cleared
• Distance measurement tool — useful for planning efficient routes
• Custom location pins — drop your own markers for items you're saving for later

The free tier covers the essentials. A paid tier removes ads and adds multi-playthrough profiles, which is genuinely useful if you're doing a second run.

Plan Routes by District

Don't chase collectibles randomly. Clear one district at a time, ideally right after you've taken over its rackets. You'll already be in the area, enemies will be cleared, and you won't waste fast-travel time.

Watch for Interior-Only Spawns

Almost every collectible in Mafia III is inside a building. That means you're checking:

• Bars and jukebox corners
• Motel rooms and nightstands
• Warehouse offices and desks
• Garage workbenches
• Record store shelves and counters

If you're driving past a building wondering whether it's worth entering, the answer is usually yes if it's a named location.

Which Collectibles Are Missable?

Not all collectibles carry the same risk. Open-world items stay available forever — you can grab them in the post-game cleanup phase without issue. Mission-locked items are the ones that demand attention.

Community consensus is that roughly a quarter of all collectibles sit in mission-locked spaces. That's enough to ruin a completion run if you're careless.

The Replay Safety Net

If you do miss something, Mafia III's mission replay feature lets you jump back into specific chapters. Your collectible progress carries over, so replaying a mission to grab a missed magazine works fine. The downside is time — replaying a full mission for one item is tedious, which is exactly why pre-mission checking is worth the effort.

Rewards for Full Completion

So what do you actually get for hunting down all 34 items?

The album records are the most satisfying reward because they permanently improve your moment-to-moment experience. There's something genuinely nice about unlocking a new track and hearing it kick in during a drive across the bayou.

The magazine collectibles are more about flavor — vintage ads, articles, and photography that reinforce the 1968 setting. If you appreciate period detail, they're worth the hunt on their own.

Achievement Hunting Notes

For trophy and achievement hunters, the collectible grind is mandatory for full completion. The three collectible-related achievements are straightforward once you're tracking locations properly. The real bottleneck is the mission-locked items, not the open-world ones.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

After reading countless player reports, a few patterns show up again and again:

• Skipping external maps entirely — the in-game map won't help you, so refusing to use a tracker guarantees a messy run
• Rushing story missions — the single biggest cause of permanently missed items
• Searching randomly — sweeping without a filtered map wastes hours
• Ignoring interiors — if you only check outdoor areas, you'll find almost nothing
• Not marking finds — you'll re-search the same bar three times

Avoid these five and the collection process becomes a relaxing background task instead of a chore.

Final Thoughts on Mafia III Collectibles

The Mafia III collectibles system is small but demanding. Thirty-four items across three categories sounds manageable until you realize none of them appear on your map and a chunk are locked behind one-time story missions.

The winning approach is simple: use an interactive map, sweep districts after clearing their rackets, and always check for mission-locked items before starting a story chapter. Do that, and you'll finish with all three achievements, a fuller soundtrack, and a genuine appreciation for how much period detail Hangar 13 packed into New Bordeaux's back rooms.