When charity shop manager Jaime-Marie Madden came across an old Beatles LP in her shop, she thought it might be worth a modest sum.
But the dusty vinyl record of Please Please Me eventually fetched more than £4,200 on eBay for Cancer Research UK.
The record was donated to the Enfield Cancer Research UK shop in The Town, Enfield, in good condition. Despite its battered cover, and Jaime-Marie soon realised it was a higher-value item, better suited for the charity’s online marketplace.
She said: “I thought it might only be worth a few hundred pounds when I first spotted the vinyl,” Jaime-Marie recalled. “The record was in good condition with only a few marks, although the cover sleeve was pretty damaged and worn with scuff marks, ageing and stains.”
She wrapped it up carefully and sent it off from the store in The Town shopping parade to the charity’s ‘marketplaces’ team for eBay.
The auction ran for five days and ended with a winning bid of £4,211.
Why was it worth so much?
The record was a rare first pressing of the Beatles’ debut album Please Please Me, released in 1963 on the original Parlophone label, and with a highly sought-after black and gold label.
The earliest Beatles releases on Parlophone had a black label with gold text, with the classic and more common black and yellow label appearing a few months later.
“We knew we had something special,” Jaime-Marie added. “But I couldn’t believe it sold for £4,200!”
The charity’s online shop sells up to 4,000 new and donated items a week, with 91,000 followers worldwide on its eBay shop and 35,000 on Depop, together getting an average half-a-million page views.
Auctioneer Mike Kuklenko, a vinyl record valuation specialist, said: “The Beatles album in this format is incredibly rare and well-spotted by Jaime-Marie. What a find!
“Sometimes I tell people they’ve got a gem worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds in their collections.”
Harper Field auctioneers specialise in vinyl valuation and sales, including lifetime collections, closing-down stock from local record shops and individual vinyl albums and singles from private collectors.
The Please Please Me album title comes from the Beatles’ first No 1 chart-topping single released in January 1963, which started the whole Liverpool pop music phenomenon.
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