- Vinyl records have become a hot commodity and are predicted to surpass CD sales for the first time in 33 years.
- Certain rare records, like the single copy of the Wu-Tang Clan's "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," are worth millions of dollars.
- Other expensive records sell for tens of thousands because they were never supposed to be printed at all, like Prince's "Black Album."
- Discogs, a crowdsourced database of music info and a vinyl marketplace, shared a list of the top 10 most expensive records it has ever sold.
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When CDs were invented in 1982, the market for vinyl records quickly collapsed. But around 2010, vinyl started to make a comeback, and now prices for certain rare editions are sky high.
For the first time in 33 years, vinyl records are on track to surpass CD sales, CNBC's Daniel Bukszpan reported, and record prices are steadily climbing.
Rare records in particular, such as those with misprinted covers or low production numbers, have sold for millions of dollars. In 2015, disgraced pharma exec Martin Shkreli paid $2 million for the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan record "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," although he has since forfeited it to the federal government after being convicted of securities fraud.
Several online marketplaces that buy and sell vinyl records told Business Insider that they'd seen exponential growth in sales since the vinyl resurgence in the late 2000s.
"It has a lot to do with a counterbalance to streaming and downloading and any non-physical form of media," said Dan Orkin, the director of content at music gear marketplace Reverb, which sells vinyl records on its website. "As that became more dominant, I think a lot of people started looking to records as a more authentic way to experience music."
Aub Driver, a spokesperson for Discogs, an online music database with a large marketplace for records, said the site really started to see sales boom around 2015. From 2010 to 2014, most high-price records were selling for about $2,000, but in 2015 that number suddenly increased to $3,000 and then continued to climb.
Here are the 10 most expensive records ever sold on Discogs: