I’m not much of a collector, but I am quite fond of my limited edition 7" Get It On single by Grinderman, which features artwork by Nick Cave scratched into the vinyl as b-side.
I have a 45 of a Florida punk band called The Eat(Communist Radio b/w Catholic Love), hand-numbered 273 of 500. I think it’s worth several hundred $.
“What Time Are You?” by Steve Kaczorowski
One note: Everyone knew at the time it was released that the album was self-published; Steve made no bones about that. But the rest of the fraud is true.
Easily Dave Mason and Cass Elliot’s LP.
Next would probably be Badfinger’s Straight Up album but it’s nowhere close.
My musical theatre collection includes the second Swedish cast LP of Jesus Christ Superstar, a REAL Mexican Starlight Express CD (never released, I got it from the translator) and all three Japanese Phantom of the Opera CDS. My rarest English CD is the original recording of Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was pressed once and sold for $35 for a 37 minute recording.
I have a prerecorded Minidisc of Alice in Chains’ Unplugged.
We have several of those Pacific Jazz anthology boxed album sets for Charlie Parker and a lot of the old greats.
A 45 of “Dig the Gold” by Joyce Cobb.
A 45 of “Comin’ After Jinny” by Tex Ritter (written by that ole cowpoke Shel Silverstein)
A 45 of “Then” by Charles “Mr. Action” Davenport.
That’s considered rare? It was a number 1 album!
Nice! I’ve been looking for that!
I have the **Billion Dollar Babies **LP wallet with the billion dollar bill with Alice on it and the Schools’ Out LP that opens like an old school desk. (no panties though:()
I have KISS **Double Platinum **LP with the original “Platinum Award” certificate thanking me for my KISS Army membership!
I have an original Rolling Stones 1967 **Their Satanic Majesties Request **with the 3D cover and Sticky Fingers with the zipper.
That said my prize possessions are definitely my collection of Beatles 45’s on the Apple label.
I guess they would be my “Rubber Dubber” bootlegs: Led Zeppelin , “Live at the L.A. Forum 1970,” Rolling Stones, “European Tour Live 1970” and Jimi Hendrix, “Enjoy” (also from the L.A. Forum, 1970).
This site lists the Zeppelin and Stones albums for $90 each, and the Hendrix album for $150. I paid $6.00 for each of these new. A head shop in Atlanta had a faily good stock of Rubber Dubbers in the early 70’s. You can read a little more about Rubber Dubber here.
I have a whole bunch of 45s, plenty of Beatles in there, including I Saw Her Standing There, and few bootlegs from back in the 70’s, not sure how rare they really are.
One album I’ve always loved is from 1972: Zephyr’s Sunset Ride album.
I have U2’s first EP, “3” on white vinyl. Not sure what it’s worth–probably in the tens of dollars…
Depends on what you mean by “rare.” If I were to record myself singing in the shower, and burn one and only one CD of it, it would be, by at least some definitions, extremely rare—but of no interest to anybody.
I could probably come up with plenty of examples of CDs and cassettes and, in at least one case, vinyl albums that would be very hard to track down another copy of, some of which I like very much indeed. But I don’t know if they would mean anything to anybody else here, nor how to measure their relative rarity.
I disc I’ve found so far that has the highest selling price on Amazon, for whatever that’s worth, is the version of Peter and the Wolf by Wendy Carlos and Weird Al Yankovic.
I have that, somewhere.
I also have the Carlos/Yankovic “Peter and the Wolf” on vinyl. I wasn’t aware it was so rare!
Negativland’s “U2” is probably my rarest vinyl. I haven’t priced it out recently, but about 10 year ago I saw a copy in NYC for $120. Mine’s near mint, played maybe twice.
I have a proper copy of Lennon’s and Ono’s ‘Two Virgins’. The one that comes in a plain brown wrapper one can remove rather than the permanently censored version. The vinyl’s in great shape, I’m told it’s worth a couple of hundred dollars. That may even be true.
Bravo, sir. That is a fucking amazing story.
I have that too! That’s the first concert I ever attended. It warped me.
I assume you would only count full releases (EPs or LPs, not singles) from actual labels (not burned by some local band), otherwise, I probably have dozens of CDs that are theoretically extremely rare.
Rare as in hardest to get, that would be an original print of Antestor’s Martyrium; took me 2 years to find it and I think there were only a thousand or so made, but they were all in Europe, which is why it was hard to find.
Rare as in fewest that exist, is probably another Antestor album of which I think only 100 (or was it 1000?) were made.
I also have the first numbered of an Album by Brave, I don’t think it’s nearly as rare as a lot of other stuff, but surely having the first one is noteworthy.
I actually knew Steve – he was in my high school and was in my brother’s class (he transferred in after I graduated, so I was in college when I met him). When the album came out (and there was no doubt it was a vanity project), I bought a copy. My brother – who performs professionally from time to time – recorded with him.