What was the most expensive record that you ever bought ?

Beatles MOFI collection brand new when it came out 40 or so years ago for about $250. Would never sell it....Probably worth $1500-$2000 in the NM condition it is in.  My Dark Side or Set Pepper UHQRs may be worth in that range and only paid $35-40 for them when they came out. Would never sell them....

Paying for rarity is different than paying for audiophile quality. I would not pay for rarity as almost always, any excellent music is either available as a reissue or is in the works. I am sure the availability of the new Aja UHQR (which is the best sounding record I own) will make the Cisco version take a hit on the resale market for audiophiles (probably not collectors).

If you're collecting records and not playing them, you might as well collect stamps or coins... Records are made to be played and enjoyed. Just like cars.

Since someone asked, this is the original british Electric Ladyland cover: Got this image from the web and the red stripes were added for modesty, not on the original image

I somewhat arbitrarily set myself a limit of $100 for any and all LP’s, breaking that rule for only one title: the MoFi 1-Step of Tapestry. I care enough about the album to pay for the first really good (in relative terms: Lou Adler was not a record producer who made audiophile quality recordings. The recording itself has always suffered from mediocre SQ, particularly of the piano and voice) version of the album.

I recently found a stone-Mint copy of Church Street Blues by Tony Rice, for which I paid $80. This great Bluegrass album on Sugar Hill Records features excellent SQ.

The best LP investment I ever made was getting the Beatles In Mono boxset while it was still in print. I paid whatever it was going for then ($250-$300), and it now changes hands for many multiples of that amount. I then sold all my MoFi stereo Beatles LP’s, keeping the original stereo Parlophone pressings I bought back in the late-60’s.

Esoteric album I have four of them.$99 each

Oh, and in contrast I bought a bunch of LP’s for 2 bucks apiece at the recent sidewalk sale Millennium Records in Portland Oregon has once or twice a year. I even found a few titles on my wants list, all in NM condition. It took me about 4 hours to look through all the cartons of LP’s; I washed down some muscle relaxers with Bourbon when I got home. 😉

When I go a record huntin’ I bring along my little 6-ring notebook (with 3-1/2" x 6" lined filler paper) which contains pages of titles, too many to remember. I've bought more LP's in the past five years or so than I did in the preceding twenty-five.