There’s only one word that matters for June’s top sellers: Prince! The Purple One has set another record in the Discogs Marketplace, and so has The Black Album. Back in April 2016, a US promo copy went for $15,000. While a promo copy from the States is incredibly rare, it’s nothing compared to the version that just netted $27,500.

Originally styled as The Funk Bible in press releases, it was slated for release in December 1987. At the last minute, Prince decided the album was “evil.” Not the cool kind of evil, either. He ordered Warner Bros. to shelve the album and destroy every copy. Some promos had already been circulated, so they were out there to be passed around. Consequently, those promo copies are how The Black Album became one of the most bootlegged records of all time.

This month’s high earner is different. It’s not a promo release and was uncirculated. The sealed LP was part of the otherwise-destroyed Canadian production run and was saved by a pressing plant employee at the last minute!

According to Jeff Gold, a former Executive VP at Warner Bros. Records who worked with Prince, the anonymous employee “was working at Columbia Records’ Canadian pressing plant in Canada. When The Black Album was pulled and the copies that had been made marked for destruction, he kept one copy for himself. He never realized its rarity or value until reading about the discovery of [five sealed US copies in 2016] and contacted me.”

As the only known production copy from Canada, that makes this version of The Black Album one of the rarest pieces of vinyl in the world. So of course it would sell for more than my first five cars combined!

Here are the rest of June’s most expensive items sold in the Discogs Marketplace:

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