As the merchandise exchanged and money roared…
After a copy sold on eBay in October 2004 for £3,100 GBP (approx. $6,200 USD), (12.09.2004 NEWS: SPACE ODDITY IN ALL TIME TOP 10 MOST EXPENSIVE DISCS) I think most collectors thought the legendary purple vinyl Scary Monsters album had commanded its highest price and that there was nobody else on the planet mad enough to top the three grand paid for what was considered by most to be a bootleg. They didn’t reckon on the French.
As you may have concluded from the previous clues, a very serious French collector has placed a winning bid of £4,220 (approx. $8,400 USD) on this item in a recently ended eBay auction.
The history of this record is sketchy, but general consensus has it that an RCA Records pressing plant employee unofficially pressed a handful of these and some red vinyl copies of Low (which I’ve yet to see physical evidence of) back in the 1980s.
The October 2004 £3,100 copy was followed in June 2005 by an opaque purple pressing (all other copies seem to have been transparent purple) which fetched a mere £1,087. The opaque copy is considered to be a bootleg of the transparent purple version…confused?
Either way, it seemed this was enough to destabilise the record’s value, with further copies selling for the following amounts…
£1,921 November 2005
£2, 941 February 2006
£1,800 December 2006
However, with this latest copy selling for such a large sum of money, it seems the purple vinyl Scary Monsters is a pretty sound investment, legitimate or otherwise.