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Forty years after it was made, the Velvet Underground's first recording
was purchased for 75 cents at a Manhattan flea market. It has thus become a financial
success in cyberspace on eBay.
Warren Hill, a collector from Montreal who discovered the 12-inch,
bought the acetate LP four years ago (2002) at a flea market in Manhattan's Chelsea
neighborhood for 75 cents.
The recording turned out to be an in-studio acetate made during Velvet
Underground's first recording over four days in April 1966 at New York's
Scepter Studios. The record reportedly is only one of two in existence;
the other is privately owned, with rumors circulating around the world
about who the owner is.
The studio recording — considered lost — is the first version of an LP
that the artist Andy Warhol shopped to Columbia Records as a
ready-to-release debut album by his protégé band, according to Eric
Isaacson of Mississippi Records in Portland, Oregon.
Isaacson helped Hill decipher the nature of his lucky find.
 
"We cued it up and were stunned — the first song was not 'Sunday
Morning' as on the 'Velvet Underground & Nico' Verve LP, but rather it
was 'European Son' — the song that is last on that LP, and it was a
version neither of us had ever heard before!" writes Isaacson. "It was
less bombastic and more bluesy than the released version, and it clocked
in at a full two minutes longer. I immediately took the needle off the
record, and realized that we had something special."
Columbia had rejected the album due to it's sexual and drug related
themes, but the Velvet Underground went on to
worldwide success, leaving its musical stamp on hundreds of other bands.
How the LP got to the flea market is a mystery.
But once Hill and Isaacson discovered what they had, they photographed
the album and made a digital backup copy of the music.
They also decided to put it up for auction through Saturn Records, of
Oakland, California, which represented Hill for the 10-day eBay auction
that began Nov. 28, with first online bids blazing to $20,000 (€15,000).
Note: The first eBay auction went badly wrong - with the final
$155,000 bid being a hoax. The album is now back in auction for a
second time with pre-approved bidders.
Also - the above video is a rare live performance of Venus in Furs.
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