As vinyl collecting continues to grow, records surrounding vinyl sales keep right on falling. We now have a new record for the most expensive LP ever sold, and it has more than doubled the price fetched by the previous record holder.
The new most expensivest record (we need a 2 Chainz listening party ASAP) is Ringo Starr’s copy of The White Album. Copy number 0000001 of The Beatles’ classic album sold for a whopping $790,000 last year to a private bidder. Guinness World Records just confirmed that the sale makes this particular piece of vinyl the most expensive record ever sold at auction.
The previous record-holder was an acetate of Elvis Presley’s first recording, a single that had “My Happiness” on Side A and “That’s When Your Heartache Begins” on the reverse. Jack White (who else?) dropped a cool $300,000 on the collectible back in 2015.
Pharmadouche Martin Shrkeli’s $2 million purchase of Wu-Tang’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was not considered by Guinness because the album was never before sold commercially.
According to Ringo, all the proceeds from the sale went to his Lotus Foundation, a charity established with the goal of “advancing social welfare” across numerous causes like cancer research and substance abuse programs.
