When vinyl becomes extremely expensive

Research assistant Hendrik Sonnabend from the FernUniversität in Hagen.
and a British colleague conducted a scientific study to investigate how rarity affects the prices of unusually expensive vinyl collector's items. They collected data on the most expensive sales of a month on a relevant online platform.

The empirical analysis showed that the price increases by around 16% for a one percent reduction in supply. The age of the recording, on the other hand, hardly plays a role. Recordings by artists on the Wikipedia list of best-selling music artists are on average 15 percent more expensive than, for example, black metal records by bands that are less popular. The entry of an album there only brings four percent.

First editions of very popular albums that were produced in small numbers are particularly interesting. The Led Zeppelin debut album with turquoise lettering from 1969, for example, is worth 1000 to 1500 euros, the official repress with red lettering 15 to 30 euros. The increase in value of the all-black Prince album, of which only a few legally produced debut copies exist, was even more extreme.

Shortly before the release, Prince had a spiritual experience in which God told him that the album was evil or sinful. Prince therefore had the entire production destroyed at his own expense in 1987, with only a few remaining.

Original article:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336923221_Pricing_the_Groove_Hedonic_equation_estimates_for_rare_vinyl_records