What is the rarest Bob Dylan vinyl?
Today, for about half the price of a new record, people can afford a month’s subscription to a streaming platform with practically every song ever recorded at their fingertips. Despite this weightless luxury, millions of music lovers across the globe flock to the shops to push the bar of a triumphant vinyl comeback. In 2022, vinyl sales grew for the 15th consecutive year, with the bar reaching 5.5 million units, the highest level since 1990. Reissues from legendary artists like Bob Dylan make up a healthy portion of modern sales, but encouragingly, young artists and listeners also make up a significant portion of the physical market.
These impressive figures published over the past 15 years don’t even account for the millions of records recirculating in the second-hand market. Indeed, a shelf-aching mass of records from the pre-1990s vinyl age have been warped, scratched and binned, not to mention all the Cliff Richard throwaways and classical music LPs that have found a pre-mortem limbo in dusty charity shop boxes. However, amid this expansive rough are some gleaming diamonds.
For some modern vinyl collectors, the reissue of The Beatles’ Revolver doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Purchasing such a record at market value from the local HMV may be thrill enough for some, but for others, it’s too painstakingly easy, and after all, where’s the collector’s value in a ubiquitous and unlimited product? Instead, collectors on the more devoted and pedantic end of the spectrum will sift second-hand shops and scour the deep recesses of eBay for a good deal on the original mono pressing of Revolver, which contains the rare withdrawn version of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.
A copy of this rare first pressing of Revolver in sound condition will currently set you back around £300. Granted, this is a little more than most people are willing to spend on a plastic noise disc, but it’s child’s play compared to the eye-watering value placed upon the rarest Bob Dylan vinyl issue.
In a similar blunder, Dylan’s immensely popular sophomore album of 1963, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was initially released with four tracks that were quickly replaced following the record’s official release. ‘Rocks and Gravel’, ‘Let Me Die In My Footsteps’, ‘Gamblin’ Willie’s Dead Man’s Hand’ and ‘Talkin’ John Birch Blues’ all featured on this extremely rare pressing.
For reasons that were never entirely clarified, these four tracks were removed and replaced by just two: ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Girl From The North Country’. Some suggest that ‘Talkin’ John Birch Blues’ was removed by the CBS-owned Columbia Records for the same reason CBS television executives stopped Dylan from performing the song during an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Very few of these original “withdrawn” copies have surfaced in the past six decades since the album’s release. Allegedly, only two stereo and 20 mono copies have been documented. Needless to say, these are some of the most expensive plastic discs you can get your mitts on. According to Record Mecca, a stereo copy sold for $35,000 a few years ago, while a mint-condition mono pressing would likely draw around $15,000 at auction.
So, if you’re looking to earn a bit of extra pocket money, you might find something surprisingly valuable in that dusty old second-hand shop or the vast expanse of eBay. You just have to hope the vendor isn’t wise to it!
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