20 UNDISCOVERED RARITIES

Worth hundreds of pounds today, these albums appeared on major labels but slipped through the cracks to become some of today’s ultra-rarities. Compiled by Richard Morton Jack

In the last decade, the period between 1965 and 1973 has become unquestionably the most collectible. Mint albums by household names such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd routinely sell for enormous sums on eBay. Collectibles by such artists (the black and gold Please Please Me, the turquoise Led Zeppelin I, first pressings of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn etc), however, seem to appear on eBay or dealer lists every week, indicating that – while they are sought-after – they are hardly in short supply.

A small number of well-known obscurities also go for titanic sums – examples include Nick Drake, Leaf Hound, Vashti Bunyan, The Open Mind, Kaleidoscope and several on Vertigo and Deram. Yet the actual rarity of these is questionable. Relatively, of course, they are scarce – but most crop up online frequently (visit popsike.com for a guide, if not a comprehensive one) and most, if not all, of the period’s hardcore collectors around the world own copies. New record prices paid for LPs in perfect condition seem to be set monthly, and no one is ever sure quite how many copies of them actually exist. There is a school of thought that says the majority of copies of albums we now consider ultra-rare are in fact still where they have always been – in the possession of the people who bought them in the first …

by Richard Morton Jack
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