Wu-Tang Clan Sold the Single Copy of Its Secret Album for Millions of Dollars
30th November 2015
If you’re a hardcore Wu-Tang Clan fan, you can stop combing your couch for loose change and eating instant ramen: the single physical copy of the group’s secret album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin has been sold. Forbes reported the album’s sale through online auction house Paddle8 yesterday afternoon, and later confirmed that the album had been sold to a “private American collector” for a total somewhere in the millions.
The auction house hasn’t shared an exact number yet, but it confirmed that the price was high enough to make Once Upon a Time in Shaolin the most expensive single album ever sold. (It’s breaking a record previously held by Elvis Presley — Jack White bought a rare version of his first song ever for $300,000 in January of this year.) The sale was actually made in May, but it took months for the buyer and the Wu to sort out the contractual language and protections surrounding the album. In any case, the sale price is high enough to make you feel a little better about shelling out an extra 10 bucks to hear the new Adele record.
Cue whining by the Usual Suspects about the 1% getting stuff the rest of us can’t.
I am pleased that it was an American collector, not a Russian kleptocrat or a petrodollar Prince or a Slightly-Pink-Chinese tycoon.