Do you have a valuable vinyl record that could be worth up to £25,000?
There could be a vinyl record with a £1,000 price tag hidden away somewhere in your home. From David Bowie to Madonna and Bob Dylan we share the albums that are now worth a small fortune
THE record collection gathering dust in your attic might just be worth thousands of pounds.
With Record Store Day coming up this Saturday we look at the rare records you might already own.
When looking for a valuable record it is the scarcity, rarity and the condition of a vinyl that can make an album worth it's weight in gold.
As well as this, rabid vinyl collectors will pay top money for albums that are first pressings, feature alternate covers and have typos and mistakes in the liner notes.
Sometimes a rare record could be hiding right under your nose but the trick is knowing what to look for.
Here is a round of up of records you've probably heard of or might own that could net you some serious cash.
Every dog has it's day - David Bowie "Diamond Dogs" worth £1,000
A perfect example of an album with a rare cover is "Diamond Dogs" by David Bowie.
When the album was first released in 1974 the cover featured a painting of David Bowie's top half with a dog's hind legs and genitals.
The cover was deemed far too risque and was promptly re-released with a photo of Bowie holding a rabid dog.
If you find a copy featuring genitals and all it could be worth
Vinyl expert says that sometimes rare records turn up in the unlikeliest places
CRAIG EVANS founded UK vinyl subscription service Flying Vinyl in 2015. Flying Vinyl exclusively press 7 inch records of the best new indie artists around and have released music from Viola Beach who had a posthumous number one album and The Big Moon who were nominated for a Mercury prize.
- Big names bring big bucks: Generally speaking rare gems that are worth a lot of money are usually related to big-name artists.
- Look for low serial numbers: The serial numbers on records can be a giveaway, obviously the lower the serial number the higher the value of the record because the record came off of the press earlier and if you manage to find, for example, a copy of Abbey Road by The Beatles with a low serial number it's going to hold a lot of value.
- First pressings and limited runs: It's exclusivity that makes records rare. First pressings of albums, records from limited runs of a big-name artist with records from before they were popular, things like that.
- DO judge a vinyl by it's cover: Artwork's also a big reason. It's often the discrepancies in a record that make it rare.
- Mistakes = money: So if you get a mis-print of a popular album or a copy of a record where the colours on the sleeve are different from the rest of the batch, or the labels are the wrong way around, you've probably found something rare.
- Dark Side Of The Moon: Pink Floyd have a few albums with mis-prints on the artwork that are really interesting. On Dark Side Of The Moon there's a number of copies where the spectrum of light is different colours, apparently they're worth a fortune.
- God Save The Queen: Also Sex Pistols were signed to A&M for something like two weeks before being dropped and in that time there were a limited number of pressings of God Save The Queen with A&M artwork which are still out there.
- Rare records can be found anywhere: But honestly it's sometimes the unlikeliest of places, like charity shops where they'll turn up because people who had them in the first place didn't know how rare they were and gave them away.
- You can find Flying Vinyl online
Money (That's what I want) - The Beatles "please please me" worth £6,000
Early pressings of Beatles albums are also highly coveted by vinyl junkies.
Ringo Starr's personal copy of The Beatles "White Album" which also happened to be the first ever pressing of the album with a serial number of 0000001, sold at auction for nearly £555,000.
When trying to find valuable Beatles albums look to see if the album was released by Parlaphone Records and has a black and gold Parlaphone label.
According to WalesOnline, a single copy of "Please Please Me" by The Beatles that was put out on Parlaphone records is
Pricey posters - Jimi Hendrix "Axis Bold as Love" worth £1,250
A first pressing of Jimi Hendrix's Axis Bold as love from 1967 sold on Ebay for
But the album is only as super pricey as this if it is a first pressing and features a mint condition fold out poster.
So make sure there aren't any Blu-tac marks on the back of the poster or you could be missing out on over a grand.
How to really put your foot in it - Madonna "Erotica" worth £2,000
Another example of a banned cover that is now worth thousands is Madonna's 1992 album "Erotica".
The back cover featured Madonna sucking on someones big toe.
Some people though the picture of the pop diva looked far too much like she was performing a sex act , and the album was banned in China and Singapore .
The cover was changed, but according to experts from vinyl player magazine a copy with the original cover featuring Madonna sucking on a toe can fetch in the material world.
What is the most expensive album ever sold?
MARTIN SHKRELI was once dubbed 'The most hated man in America, but he was also the owner of the most expensive record of all time.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Wu-Tang Clan is the most expensive album ever sold.
What makes this album so expensive is that there was only ever one copy released.
The album was recorded in secret for six years and then kept safe in a vault in Morroco until it was ready to be put up for auction.
Martin Shkreli, most famous for being the founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals who increased the price of a vital HIV/AIDS drug from $13.50 a pill to $750, bought the album at auction for $2million in 2015.
Shkreli has since played small clips of the album on YouTube, but he is still believed to be the only person to have heard the record in it's entirety.
The hedge fund manager has dubbed himself "Music's Villian" and has said he will probably destroy the record or hide it somewhere.
In March this year Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securites fraud and was forced to hand over more than $7million in assets.
The judge included the Wu Tang Clan album as part of these assests.
The song's they are a changin' - Bob Dylan "The Free Wheelin" worth £25,000
Bob Dylan's famous second album "The Free Wheelin" went through some serious changes before it was released.
Four songs were replaced on the album just before release but some there are still some version of the album with the four original songs unchanged.
These songs are: "Rocks and Gravel", "Let Me Die In My Footsteps", "Gamblin’ Willie’s Dead Man’s Hand", "Talkin’ John Birch Blues".
A copy of the album in good condition was bought by a collector
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What should I do if I think I have a rare album?
If you think you have got something valuable on your hands first check around.
A dealer might assume you are too green to know what you've got so it is better to shop around to find out the value of your vinyl.
Sites like Discogs are great for finding out the value of an album.
Discogs currently contains over 9 million releases, by over 5 million artists, across over 1 million labels.
The website is a record collectors Mecca and it is also probably the best place to sell your records.
You can compare the same albums in various conditions to gauge how much your album might be worth.
And there are various methods of payment including Paypal to make getting paid easier.
You can also sell your records on Ebay.
Ebay is a lot more intuitive to use than a site like Discogs and it is just as easy to get paid and manage your account.
But, Ebay does not have wealth of rare and little known records that Discogs does.
What if I want to contact a vinyl dealer directly?
The best way to meet a dealer is ata record fair.
Record fairs are like big car boot sales except all that is on sale is music.
Rather than going to a shop, this is where you are more likely to meet collectors and dealers who have private collections that they only show/sell at a record fair.
Here you can talk about records, buy, sell, haggle, and hopefully get a good price.
There is a full list of UK record fairs
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