Copy of Prince’s The Black Album sells for record-breaking $27,500

A vinyl copy of Prince’s fabled 1987 LP known as The Black Album has sold for $27,500, making it the most expensive record ever sold on online music marketplace Discogs.

The album was withheld from release by Prince, who described having an epiphanic experience that prompted him to scrap it. He told Rolling Stone in 1991: “I suddenly realised that we can die at any moment, and we’d be judged by the last thing we left behind. I didn’t want that angry, bitter thing to be the last thing.”

His decision meant there are just a handful of promotional vinyl copies in existence. The copy sold on Discogs is particularly rare, one of the 500,000 retail versions that Prince ordered to be destroyed. The anonymous owner is a former employee of a Toronto record pressing plant, who saved one of the copies.

“There are few artists as collectible as Prince, and The Black Album is one of the most valuable records in the world,” said Jeff Gold, who sold it on behalf of the seller.

The album does not officially have a title, and was to be sold in a plain black sleeve with no distinguishing features apart from the catalogue number.

The previous most expensive record sold on Discogs was also a copy of The Black Album, which went for $15,000 in 2016. Earlier this year, another copy sold for $42,298 at auction.

from Ben Beaumont-Thomas at the Guardian