Record collecting has always been a world of troubled souls. Living for the thrill of finding a record no one else owns, always hoping to find that mispressed copy of Led Zep 2 in a dusty back room, record collectors are Lovejoyesque characters, only without Ian McShane's honeyed tones – in fact, they're usually more like Tinker. The internet has taken record collecting one step further; it has become a sometimes terrifying world of one-upmanship and and wilful contrarianism. One chap – let's assume he's a man – has posted that the mod-psych track Midsummer Night's Scene by John's Children was not actually issued as a single. It's extremely rare, granted, but there are copies out there – Morrissey sidekick Boz Boorer paid more than £1,000 for a copy back in the 90s. Yet this poor soul who has never held a copy in his hands can only cope with his anguish by refusing to acknowledge the record's existence.

Soul collectors are especially intense. Darrell Banks's mid-tempo classic Open the Door to Your Heart has been a club classic ever since it came out in Britain on the Stateside label in 1966. What has always raised the pulse of collectors is the knowledge that the single was due to be be released on the London label – which had introduced British kids to many a rock'n'roll and early soul gem – before the release was pulled because the label didn't own the rights to it. So when someone casually mentioned on the Soulsource messageboard a couple of weeks ago that he had a finished London copy of Open the Door to Your Heart, eyes rolled. It was only when the owner, one Nick W, posted scans of the single that people got very excited indeed.



“This is the holy grail,” says collector, dealer and Wolves fan Pete Smith. “Nobody thought it existed.” It seems to have originally belonged to someone who worked at the pressing plant. Smith surmises that “this guy must have half-inched one from the factory the day it was pressed, gone back to work the next day and found out they'd trashed the lot.” London presumably melted down the copies they'd pressed before the single came out on Stateside a few weeks later. Just the one copy snuck out. The fortunate Nick W is keeping a low profile while he decides what to do with his find. It's safe to say he could swap the record for a fancy holiday, and redecorate his house with the change – a conservative estimate values the single at £10,000.



Aside from the pretty label, Open the Door to Your Heart also happens to be a fabulous single – a double-header, in fact, with the speedier but just as strong Our Love (Is in the Pocket) on the other side. Open the Door was a middling hit in the States on the Revilot label, making No 27 nationally and No 2 on the R&B chart. Darrell Banks performed it on the TV show American Bandstand and toured with Jackie Wilson, but although he released other very fine 60s soul singles (I'm the One Who Loves You, Beautiful Feeling, both in 1969), Open the Door was his only decent hit. Banks died in Detroit in February 1970 under dubious circumstances. He was killed after being shot in the neck by an off-duty policeman called Aaron Bullock, who had been having an affair with Banks's girlfriend. With the money made from Open the Door to Your Heart long since gone, Banks was buried in an unmarked grave – the Soulful Detroit website recently placed a memorial stone there.



Darrell Banks's sad story only adds to the myth around this single, which has suddenly become the British equivalent of Frank Wilson's legendary Motown rarity Do I Love You (Indeed I Do), of which between two and five original copies are known to exist. It makes the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen on A&M seem common or garden. Of course, you could always buy a US copy of Open the Door to Your Heart, which would cost you a tenner – or even just listen to it on Spotify. On Soulsource, one person expressed disbelief that anyone could get so excited about a record so easily available as a US issue – “That's why I gave away my World Cup final and plane tickets to Brazil,” replied a fan, “ because I can stay home and watch it on TV.”



The devil is in the detail. Personally, I love the London label and what it represents, from Little Richard and Duane Eddy singles in the 50s, through the Ronettes and Crystals 45s, to electro classics like Rockers Revenge's Walking on Sunshine in the 80s. Whether I'd pay £10,000 for Open the Door to Your Heart on London is quite another matter – I do need to eat. What would Pete Smith have done if he'd found this holy grail? “Me? I'd have already sold it. I'd be in Brazil.”

