The Top Three Most Expensive Vinyl Records

​Executive management professional Elliot Sands serves as the executive director of Faith First, a start-up nonprofit organization that seeks to connect local churches in the fight against racial inequality. He also co-founded the Denver-based virtual primary care solution CirrusMD. Outside of work, Elliot Sands loves to collect vinyl records.

Vinyl records have been making a significant rebound in popularity since 2016, when the price of vinyl records reached its highest in 25 years. The market for vinyl records continues to grow and shows no signs of slowing down.

Some vinyl records are more expensive and more sought-after than others. The third most expensive vinyl record ever sold is Elvis Presley’s My Happiness, his first recording. It was bought by Jack White, a Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter, for $300,000 in an online auction in December 2015.

An unnamed buyer bought The Beattles’ White Album in December 2015 for $790,000. This record was the first copy of the White Album and was personally owned by Ringo Starr. It bears the serial number “0000001,” meaning it was the first in the sequence of printed copies.

The most expensive vinyl record ever sold was Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The vinyl record, the only physical copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin ever produced, was purchased for $2 million by Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli in an auction in 2015. Following Shkreli's conviction for securities fraud, all of his assets, including the record, were seized by federal agents. The record was later sold to crypto collective PleasrDAO for $4 million.

Elliot Sands

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