A battered, unmarked disc priced at 75 cents at a Chelsea, New York, sidewalk sale in September 2002 turned out to be a one-of-a-kind 1966 Velvet Underground acetate tied to Lou Reed, according to the account of the buyer, record collector Warren Hill. The item later sold on eBay in December 2006 for $25,200, after an earlier auction produced a winning bid that never closed.
From sidewalk bargain to marketplace listing
Hill, then a Kenny Rogers Roasters employee visiting from Montreal, was killing time at the sale when he spotted the disc. He did not know at the time that he was buying a test pressing cut at Scepter Studios, years before the band's debut album took shape around Reed's songs.
The acetate was recorded in April 1966 at Scepter Studios in New York, capturing early versions of songs that would appear on The Velvet Underground & Nico the following year. It was cut under the direction of Norman Dolph, a Columbia Records sales executive who helped produce the demo.
According to the source account, Dolph reportedly received an original painting from Andy Warhol, who was managing the band at the time, in exchange for cutting the acetate in secret before a label signing. Only about two such pressings are believed to exist, a scarcity profile that helped turn the object into a collectible asset.
A bid is not a closed deal
Before offering the disc for sale, Hill showed it to his friend Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records in Portland, Oregon.
When Hill listed the acetate on eBay in 2006, the auction initially drew a winning bid of $155,401, but the transaction fell through. The market reset later that year: in December 2006, the acetate ultimately resold on eBay for $25,200, a wide gap between a public bid and a completed sale.
Rarity, replication and later resales
- 2012: the acetate's contents were made publicly available through a reissue produced from an identical test pressing, separating the listening experience from the physical object.
- July 2014: the acetate surfaced again when Chicago record store Shuga Records listed it on eBay on behalf of an anonymous seller.
Taken together, the sequence traces a sidewalk purchase that became a verified artifact, and a niche collectible that moved through public auctions with a documented and unusually wide spread between its highest bid and its eventual sale price.
