Free Republic

The odd northern soul single might have sold for $10,000, but a 60s garage punk record fetching that amount has not been seen until now. But this is what "Boy, What'll You Do Then", by Denise & Company, a 1966 recording on the Wee label out of Oakland, California, recently sold for. This raucous recording, only the second copy known to exist, was initially featured in an eBay auction, where it garnered intense interest from collectors and received bids of over $4,000, until the item pulled by the site due to incorrect auction procedure. A dealer then privately bought the...

How an Original Velvet Underground Acetate Wound Up in Portland (And Could Be the Most Expensive Record in the World!) Yard sales are like junior high dances. You show up full of anticipation, bump into a lot of people, and then leave disappointed. But in both cases, an ineffable sense of possibility spawns return, over and over. Maybe this time I'll slow dance with Tiffany Pfeiffer. Maybe this time I'll find a first edition of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Maybe my life will change within the hour. And so earlier this year, with flickering expectation, Warren Hill...

Technology is changing the huge global market for record collectors. As music dealers like those immortalised in the book High Fidelity disappear, will vinyl and CD rarities survive the download revolution? Second-hand record shops are becoming almost as rare a sighting in the UK as a first edition Beatles EP. The days of shuffling into grubby backstreet stores in search of that obscure Pink Fairies seven-inch are on their way out as dealers succumb to the march of online auction sites and MP3s. CURRENT RARITIES U2's Trabant car: £6,000 Queen 12" single: £10,000 Withdrawn Nirvana CD: £500 Led Zeppelin seven-inch:...