In 1994, Prince released his Black Album as a very limited edition release. The project was released on CD and cassettes but there was reportedly no vinyl copies made. Recently former Warner Bros. Executive President Jeff Gold received a message from a former colleague that he had come across five vinyl copies of the release in some old Warner mailers.

At first Gold didn’t believe it. He told Vibe.com, “I naturally assumed it was a fake . . . but wrote a polite response back that one really couldn’t tell if it was genuine unless you opened up the record and inspected it, and that almost all of them were unfortunately not authentic.”  Three of the five vinyl records is now up for sale at Gold’s music memorabilia store, Record Mecca. The asking price was initially $15,000 each but it has now grown to $20,000 each.