Reed It And Weep: The Most Expensive Velvet Underground Collectible Of All Time

If you happen to be drunk and alone–and yet still able to recite your checking-account number without skipping a digit–it’s probably best that you skip this item for later, as we don’t want to be held liable for your ill-advised online-auction sprees. But we encourage everyone else to check out this eBay auction, in which an insanely rare Velvet Underground acetate is currently hovering in the low five figures. From a write-up in Goldmine magazine:

In September of 2002 Warren Hill of Montreal Canada was perusing a box of records at a Chelsea, New York street sale when he happened upon a nice Leadbelly 10″ on Folkways, a water damaged copy of the first Modern Lovers LP on Beserkely, and a brittle 12″ piece of acetone-covered aluminum with the words “Velvet Underground. 4-25-66. Att N. Dolph” written on the label. He purchased the three records for 75 cents each…

We pieced together that this was probably a surviving copy of the legendary Scepter studios recordings which had been regarded as lost (hence the epic moniker “the lost scepter studios recordings” applied to these unheard sessions over the years). The recording is comprised of the primitive first “finished” version of the LP that Andy Warhol had shopped to Columbia as a ready-to-release debut album by his protege collective “The Velvet Underground”.

This acetate, which is possibly the only surviving copy, represents the first Velvet Underground album as Andy Warhol intended it to be released…it was said by some that the master tapes had burned in a fire, by others that all of those recordings ended up being on the released album, and still by others that the only existing copy of that material was on an acetate owned by David Bowie, and that he was known to tout it as his most prized possession.

The current high bid is $18,100, placed by one “n1ckman.” We’re guessing his PayPal trail leads back to one Lewis Allen Reed, who’s looking for something to liven up his new rec room-slash-raven sanctuary.

VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO 1966 Acetate LP ANDY WARHOL [eBay]