No matter how good the presents you got over break were, they pale in comparison to the present Warren Hill got on Dec 16 of last year.
The story starts in September 2002. Warren Hill, a Canadian music buff, was visiting New York. A music connoisseur, Hill spent much of his time browsing hole-in-the-wall used record stores and flea markets in Manhattan. In a basement store in Chelsea, New York, Hill made a few purchases: a 10"" Leadbelly, a Modern Lovers LP, and a mysterious vinyl recording with no label proper but a sticker on it that read: ""Velvet Underground. 4-25-66."" The total cost for all three records: $2.25.
Curious about the VU-stickered acetate record, Hill and a friend sat down to determine what, if anything, the recording was. After listening to the first song, they immediately took the needle off the record and began placing phone calls to record collectors and music historians: They had something priceless on their hands. What they heard when they played the record was, in fact, the Velvet Underground, but it was unlike any VU recording they'd ever heard, and after some fact-checking they realized there was only one possible explanation: for 75 cents, Hill had accidentally purchased a demo recording, with different track mixes and a different song order, of the Velvet Underground's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico.
Now, if this sounds less than earth-shatteringly cool, take a moment to reflect on who the Velvet Underground were. The VU was one of the great rock sensations of the 1960s, and included the immensely talented Lou Reed and John Cale, and was Andy Warhol's own personal house band. They released some of the all-time greatest rock albums and many of their songs still live in infamy: ""Heroin,"" ""White Light/White Heat,"" ""Sweet Jane,"" ""Oh! Sweet Nuthin',"" and many, many more. For hardcore rock fans, the demo acetate recording was like stumbling onto the Holy Grail or the Rosetta Stone.
So Hill was forced to make a decision: to sell, or not to sell. He opted for the money, and so he did what all good Americans do when they have something of value they want to unload: he put it on eBay. For the next few weeks, music enthusiasts all over the world checked the site daily to watch the bids go from $10,000 to $20,000 to $50,000 with no foreseeable end in sight.
Finally, on Dec 8, 2006, 253 bids later, ""mechadaddy,"" won the war with a whopping $155,000 bid. This was huge—the VU record was now the third most expensive rare album ever, trailing only after a one-of-a-kind Quarrymen record (Quarrymen=John Lennon's first band) and an incredibly rare LP of Double Fantasy, autographed by Lennon himself only hours before his assassination, which sold for half a million dollars.
Shortly after the bid closed, eBay received an e-mail from a high school kid, handle ""mechadaddy,"" that said he was so sorry but he was just a kid joking around, curious to see how much people would bid and didn't even have enough money to put gas in his car—let alone pay $155,000 for the record. So all the excitement was for naught. The auction was deemed illegitimate, and Warren Hill was left with nothing.
Fortunately, eBay wised up for Round 2: They held the auction in secret, only inviting serious buyers to bid on the item, and the record ended up selling (again) on Dec 16 for $25,200 to an anonymous VU enthusiast. Sure, it was $130,000 less than he was expecting but, for a 75 cent investment, I'd say Hill made one hell of a profit.
