One of the most valuable records of all time goes up for auction

Estimated at $500,000, Elvis Presley’s first ever recording is being sold at Graceland in January.

They don’t come much rarer than this. Five months after his eighteenth birthday, with just four bucks in his pocket, a young Elvis Presley made his way to Sun Records’ Memphis Recording Service to cut a single copy of his first acetate disc, and the first of millions he would go on to sell on the way to becoming the biggest rock n roll star in history. As the story goes, Elvis was simply making the recording as a present for his mother.

Recorded on 18th July 1953, the single includes ‘My Happiness’ on one side and ‘That’s When Your Heartaches Begin’ on the other, the single eventually found its way into the hands of friend Ed Leek and has now been put up for auction for the first time, when Graceland hold their second such event on 8th January to coincide with what would have been The King’s 80th birthday.

Although Graceland have not provided any estimates, Record Collector magazine once valued the record at $500,000, significantly higher than pre-Beatles outfit The Quarrymen’s original 1958 single ‘That’ll Be The Day/In Spite Of All The Danger’, which tends to top ‘most valuable records of all time’ lists at around $200,000.

A signed, 78rpm copy of Elvis’s first Sun Records single ‘That’s All Right’ will also be included in the lot from Leek’s collection, along with a copy of Elvis’ driving license and a signed radio show contract from 1955. [via New York Times]

Can’t understand why someone could part with that much money for a single record? Read about the world’s most obsessive 78s collectors here.