The 10 most expensive vinyl records of all time
The days of the CD might be over, and we might now be lodged in the era of streaming, but over the past few years, vinyl has come back to prominence. Records have become revered collector’s items that see queues regularly streaming out of local records shops.
Whether it be standard album releases, deluxe editions, or special one-off’s in crazy colour schemes, over the past decade or so, the beauty of vinyl has been rediscovered by the mainstream, with many of the old guard telling younger listeners it was something they’d been saying all along. From old pressings by The Beatles to new releases by contemporary artists such as Alex G, people are now hotly searching for vinyl to add to their collections. Although, it is now a much more expensive hobby than ever before.
Given that it is such a pricey hobby, we’ve looked back at the ten most expensive vinyl records ever sold, with the figures astronomical for all included. Unsurprisingly, Liverpool legends The Beatles crop up on several occasions.
At number ten is the 2008 single by relatively unknown British DJ Scaramanga Silk, titled ‘Choose Your Weapon’. The greatest mystery on this list, it made headlines in early 2021 after it was sold the previous December for a record-breaking £30,000 ($41,095) on the collector’s website, Discogs. It became the site’s biggest recorded sale, beating Prince and The Beatles releases.
“Someone from Discogs messaged me last week, informing me that they’d had this sale, and I thought, ‘It’s a wind-up, one of my mates must’ve must have put someone up to something’ – because it just seemed farcical,” Silk told the BBC in 2021. “I’m still stunned, it’s just one of those bizarre things – I’m still trying to process it.”
Coming in at ninth on the list is enigmatic British producer Aphex Twin. Caustic Window was made by Aphex Twin – real name Richard D. James – under the alias Caustic Window. It was first pressed in 1996 and planned for release, but only a few test pressings were produced. Then, one of the copies cropped up on Discogs in 2014 and was bought by the forum, We Are the Music Makers, for around £47,000 and digitally distributed. It was later sold at an eBay auction and purchased by Minecraft creator Markus Persson for $46,300. Funds from the sale were split evenly between the Kickstarter contributors, Richard D. James and Doctors Without Borders.
Sitting at three is the ‘King of Rock and Roll,’ Elvis Presley. The single in question is ‘My Happiness,’ one of two songs alongside, ‘That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,’ that the rocker recorded on July 18th, 1953, at the iconic Sun Studios in Memphis. That makes the track Elvis’s first-ever recording and a historical moment that rightly garnered a hefty price. It was purchased at a December 2015 auction by famous vinyl lover, former White Stripes man and Third Man Records head honcho, Jack White, for $300,000.
Sitting second is The Beatles, with the first-ever pressing of their 1968 self-titled opus, commonly known as The White Album. For decades, the band’s drummer, Ringo Starr, owned the print with the serial number ‘0000001’. Then, in December 2015, he auctioned the record off via Julien’s in the US and earned $790,000 when it sold. It is the largest amount ever exchanged for a commercially released record.
The most notorious of the bunch, and the title occupying the top spot, is Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The price this one fetched blows the others out of the water. The influential New York rap group recorded the most expensive record in history in secret over six years, making only one copy. They then took it to auction in 2015, with specific contractual requirements on the buyer’s side. It was eventually purchased by big pharma boss Martin Shkreli for a reported $2 million, with the legal agreement stipulating that the album could not be commercially exploited until 2103. However, it was allowed to be played at listening parties.
In March 2018, after Shkreli was convicted of fraud, a federal court seized his assets, including Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. In 2021 the US Department of Justice sold it to NFT collectors PleasrDao for $4 million to cover Shkreli’s debts. The group said they hope to make the recording more widely available. Jamis Johnson, the spokesperson for the group, described the purchase as “ultimate protest against middlemen and rent seekers of musicians and artists,” and said they had rescued it from Shkreli, “the ultimate internet villain”.
Find the complete list of the most expensive vinyl records ever below.
The ten most expensive vinyl records of all time:
- 10. Scaramanga Silk – Choose Your Weapon ($41,095)
- 9. Aphex Twin – Caustic Window ($46,300)
- 8. The Beatles – ‘Till There Was You’ ($96,460)
- 7. The Beatles – Yesterday and Today ($125,000)
- 6. Frank Wilson – ‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’ ($130,000)
- 5. John Lennon and Yoko Ono – Double Fantasy ($150,000)
- 4. The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ($290,500)
- 3. Elvis Presley – ‘My Happiness’ ($300,000)
- 2. The Beatles – The Beatles ($790,000)
- 1. Wu-Tang Clan – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin ($4 million)
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