A recent post on selling records (and my own experience 25 years ago) leads me to conclude that keeping records as an investment is not sound financial advice. Even if you’ve taken really good care of them. My pristine copy of Heaven 17’s Luxury Gap, with signatures on the cover, turned out not to be the pension fund I thought it would be.
Could there be a genuinely priceless record in existence somewhere? If so, what would it be?
My thought is a unplayed pressing of “That’s All Right” in an original paper sleeve owned by the estate of Elvis Presley’s mother. On it would be a written “This is for you, Mama!”, signed and dated by Elvis.
Or…found under a floorboard at Menlove Ave…a high street recording booth disc dating from 1960 featuring a very young John & Paul larking about with a very rudimentary version of Love Me Do?
I think that even these items would probably change hands if the purchaser was a Musk or a Bezos or the Sheik of Araby. Ten million quid would do it. But I’m happy to be wrong.
The very first time John, Paul, George and Ringo played together was recorded and pressed as a handful of acetates.
This took place in late 1960 when both The Beatles and Rory Storm & The Hurricanes (who Ringo played with) were in Hamburg. Lu “Wally” Walters of The Hurricanes wanted to record a few standards, and elected to use The Beatles as his backing band. Pete Best had to pop off to buy some new drumsticks, hence Ringo from Wally’s band depped on drums.
Three numbers were recorded – Summertime, September Song and Fever. Several 78 acetates of at least the first number were cut, and perhaps some of the other two numbers too. Beatles manager Alan Williams allegedly had a copy, which he accidentally left behind in a pub.
This story has two morals:
1. Don’t bring records to the pub
2. Always carry a pair of drumsticks.
None of these appear to have survived, although there is a photo in circulation of the handwritten label of one of them. That photo may be a mock-up based on other acetates produced at the same studio which was based in a leather goods shop – hence the B-side consisting of an advert in German for that shop.
I’ve a book somewhere that goes into the details – I’ll try to dig it out this week.
More on the Beatles & Wally acetate and recording session, including a blurry photograph of one of the acetates:
https://beatlesource.com/bs/ao-smrtime.html
BC, did you think the pension fund was in the autographs – or more that The Luxury Gap would be a sought-after artefact in the end times?
I think I thought that Heaven 17 would end up hugely successful all over the world and then I’d have an early LP with their signatures. They did pretty well but it didn’t quite turn out like that.
F***ing good album though.
Yes it is – I think I overplayed the non-signed one.
I would say that dumping your records 30 odd years ago in favour of CDs was not a smart move as it has turned out – I never did, and now find I do have some that would fetch 3 figures, and maybe 4 in some cases.
As for a genuinely priceless artifact, it would have be a previously unknown item by a really big name – as you suggest, by the fabs probably.
I still mourn the first pressing of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left that I and a few hundred other people of taste bought when it came out in 1969. I sold it to a mate of my daughter’s for a handful of magic beans in the late 90s when I was going through a period of self-loathing because of all the stuff I was cluttering up the house with.
FLL sold 4000 copies in the Drakester’s lifetime. For an obscure English folkie that actually wasn’t bad. It’s just that in those days chart success was the only kind of success that existed.
Yebbut…FLL was was reissued in 1972, 2 years before he died, presumably to capitalise on Drakemania around Pink Moon and Bryter Later. That will be where the bulk of those 4000 were. Hardly anybody bought FLL in 69 – I once read (maybe in Joe Boyd’s book) that it was a few hundred. Including the tragically hip groover that was moi.
I’d like to know who forked out for the 1979 box set first time round. Box sets were expensive, luxury items in those days. These days they seem to be about 90% of the music industry.
My Led Zep 1 was bought from a mate in, I think, 1970 for £1. Found out a few years ago that it was a first pressing with the mistake on the label, torquoise lettering etc. and it is in probably VGC+ or maybe near mint, however people judge these things, so worth around £1,500 or so to some collector, maybe more.
I’m still friends with John, despite this!
When I was an Oxfam “music expert” we had a copy of that. It sold for about £1,100 at auction. After that I watched it whenever I saw a copy on eBay. Someone paid £7k for it. There were 2 bidders who obviously really wanted it, which pushed the price up. The seller’s opening price was about £10. Must have been very happy.
I was moving to NZ. Most of them were worthless because I wasn’t particularly careful with them – apart from a few like the H17 one.
I bought PJ Harvey’s debut album, Dry on the day of release. It came with the (limited to 1000 copies) Dry Demos bonus disc.
I was hoping it would fund my retirement, it had been over £100 on Discogs for decades. Then she re-released it. I can still retire on £15, though, right?
Many vinyl albums in the 90s and early 2000s had very low pressing numbers so originals are worth a bit e.g. ones I own like original Time Out Of Mind, Springsteen’s Devils and Dust and Aerial by Kare Bush. These are or were all worth several hundred pounds, some not as much now because of reissues.
A guy I know, and I’ve no reason to doubt it, says he and the Sainted Dave went off to London one day as teenagers and recorded something on one of those disc-booths (remember the film “Brighton Rock”?) which used to be at train stations.
They made/bought one copy, he’s got it.
Amazing story
Amazing story
Amazing story
Amazing story
Amazing story
Amazing story*
* Continues ad infinitum until the needle is cruelly yanked from the record’s grooves
Now THAT is a pension fund, I’d have thought. Particularly if there’s a good story attached to it.
There was a Marvin Gaye album found in a US second hand record shop. Not particularly remarkable – but inside the cover was Marvin Gaye’s passport! Clearly the record belonged to the man himself. Ker-very much-ching!
Somewhere in the Nick Brown Beatles book there’s a one -off Sinatra record that he made, I think, for Ringo’s mum. The tape of the recording was destroyed on the flat man’s orders.
On a similar tip, Jean Michel Jarre’s Music For Supermarkets. Allegedly no copy exists and yet…. Does it?
Sinatra recorded The Lady Is A Champ for Maureen Starkey. There is only one copy in existence.
Nice to see the wishes of Ol’ Break Their Kneecaps being respected!
“keeping records as an investment is not sound financial advice”
AW t-shirt right there.
I’m inclined to think the vinyl boom has peaked and is now set to decline.
The major labels will stop issuing physical product altogether, themselves. They will license small runs to outside specialists on demand and let those companies deal with the wastefulness inherent in producing physical product and the extra hassle of storage, shipping etc. You think new vinyl is expensive now? Just you wait.
As for what’s in your collection, unless it’s a bonafide one-off of historical significance, if your treasured actifact is currently worth a grand or so, then now is the time to sell.
It’s value is not going to increase any further.
@Slug
Fuck’s sake, Slug, my wife just saw that!
The sound the scales made as they hit the ground after falling from her eyes was apparently audible several miles away
I was wondering what that noise was …
A flawless vinyl recording of Robert Johnson singing Despacito acapella. Maybe making the TikTok noise at the end.
Just imagine.
Records were made of shellac rather than vinyl in Robert Johnson’s day, so that just wouldn’t be possible.
Only adds to the rarity value, I’m afraid. Strange things happened at those crossroads.
I know, there was Benny’s hat for starters
I am on a Facebook site for record buying and selling. With increasing frequency there are young blokes posting saying “my Dad has died and I need to sell his records. I have no idea what they are worth.”
I have seen the lists – they’re our collections.
Soon the market will be flooded.
Great, when? Get dying, ya buggas!
I touched on this a couple of years ago but didn’t embark on it… I’m not really buying anything now, let alone records… but I reckon if you just randomly go up to people aged late 60s to, say, early 80s, and say “I’ve got a new record player, I haven’t got any records to play on it, I’ll take any you have off your hands if you are not playing them,” you’d end up with some fantastic items.
You’d be providing a service and doing them a favour. People who remove things for people when they move house get paid for it, they don’t pay you.
I knew a guy at Hull Uni who reckoned he tried similar tactics with girls he met at student discos
Jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden, active between 1900 and 1907, allegedly recorded some wax cylinders with his band. If one of these did turn up it would be essentially the first ever jazz recording.
There’s also early 78s from King Oliver, featuring Louis Armstrong, which were known to have been pressed, but haven’t been found.
I was thinking of ‘the Buddy Bolden cylinder’ when I read the OP. There is only alleged to have been the one (I’ve read books on the fellow and only the one is ever talked about). Musically, it may well be a damp squib if it ever turned up – whether Buddy really played something recognisable as ‘jazz’ has been a matter of debate – but as a cultural artefact and thing of myth it has a unique cachet. It would surely be purchased by the Smithsonian or the like. But whether the price would be more than some one-off acetate involving the Beatles…
I suppose it’s a bit like an undrinkable bottle of wine from Napoleon’s cellar – the quality of the wine itself isn’t the reason why it’s valuable.
I’d like to think that a Bezos or a Musk would buy said artefact for gazillions and then donate it to a top-notch public museum.
No Parlez, surely?
Oh, you meant priceless as in beyond price.
How about this little joke? Is that priceless?
Booooodowwww!
Surely it would be The Sermon on the Mount
Too heavily bootlegged.
Then there’s the St Peter’s Picks CDs
I can confirm that people are still putting shagged out copies of the.Blue album and Thriller on Facebook marketplace for fifty quid each, but given that whoever agrees that price will probably either haggle it down when they turn up or not turn up at all, natural justice will assert itself.
I took a reissue of Kinda Kinks – an LP I’m highly unlikely to ever listen to again and, if I do, it’ll be on the all-singing, all-dancing deluxe CD version – to the British Heart Foundation a few months ago and they slapped a £25 price tag on it.
I’ve no idea if they got that much.
The original of Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree on Eden records. By some duo. Eve, I think, and some bloke. B side was an early version of The Snake.
A core inclusion in any collection
In the year 25.
Forgive my slight detour from the original post, but it was fascinating to hear (on Simon Mayo’s album show on Greatest Hits Radio) that the most sought-after Beatles autographs are all four together. No, not John, Paul, George and Ringo, but the short-lived incarnation of John, Paul, George and Jimmie Nicol; the latter stepping in for a tour when Ringo was ill. Now that’s niche.
Each of The Beatles were able to re-produce each other autograph. Some items containing all 4 autographs may only have had 1 or 2 Beatles present.
Jimmy Nicholl – later to play at right back for Manchester United – was in the band for such a short time they wouldn’t have time to copy his scribble
Jimmy Nicholl hmmmm!
?????
“… may only have had 1 or 2 Beatles present”
Probably not even that – Glen A Baker’s book about the Oz tour has a recollection from a radio DJ who approached someone on the tour (might have been Derek Taylor) to obtain autographs. “Fuck, man, I do all the autographs!” was the snarled response. It was pretty much a given that unless the Fab was actually seen doing the deed, any autograph was a phony.
Well John was probably too busy giving mother and daughter a seeing-to, if I remember my Oz tour doco correctly. And why wouldn’t I?
I wonder if there are many John, Paul, George, Stu and Pete items…
Great point – is there a set of Hamburg-era autographs anywhere?
I was at a mini record fair in Camden Town market at the weekend and one trader was selling some 60s psyche albums for up to £750!
I mean, who goes out on a Sunday afternoon with the intention of spending half a grand on a second hand Vertigo label LP and then eat falafel sat by a smelly canal?
Was selling or was trying to sell? Crucial difference.
The place was pretty much empty.
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-recording-of-a-bird-1889
The first ever recording of birdsong was made in the 1889 on a wax cylinder by 8-year-old Ludwig Koch, who in later adulthood came to live in Britain, in 1936, as a refugee from the Nazis.
He devoted the best part of his life to making birdsong recordings and often appeared on BBC radio.
On Radio NZ’s morning radio show,, at the top of the hour just before the news there’s a short birdsong recording and a velvety voice reveals the Māori and English names of said bird.
It’s a lovely touch. No matter what is happening, this is played. New presenters are told never to talk over the bird.