A rare Japanese copy of Daft Punk’s Discovery sold for $2,380 on Discogs in February. Funnily enough, it wasn’t even close to the record sale of the month.
Daft Punk has always been an incredibly popular duo, but you can’t deny you could do a whole lot with $2,380. With $2,380 you could buy a pre-covid flight around the world. With $2,380 you could buy a shitbox car, do it up, and never have to pay for bus fare ever again. With $2,380 you could probably buy enough vinyl copies of Jason Derulo’s debut album to melt down and mould into a statue eight times the size of Jason Derulo himself.
But rather than doing any of this, one Discogs punter decided that $2,380 was the right price to spend on a rare Japanese printing of Daft Punk’s Discovery. It’s a pretty nice piece, all things considered —pressed on a holographic vinyl and featuring artwork from the animated film that accompanied the album’s release, Interstella 5555. But is it worth the money?
With fans being as obsessed as they are with the French duo, especially considering their recent breakup announcement, it’s definitely not too hard to imagine just how valuable this record would be to someone. On top of this, there has been a massive upswing in Daft Punk merch purchases over the past three months, with sales reported as having increased over 2000%.
But this doesn’t even place this record in the top 20 most expensive Discogs sales of last February. The Japanese copy of Discovery places tied 21st, alongside a vinyl copy of Motörhead’s self-titled record which sold for the same price.
Rarity is normally the main factor driving up the prices of these records, and so it’s no surprise that within those ranks we see original pressings of Dark Side of the Moon (selling for around $3,000), Led Zeppelin’s ST (approx. $2400), Bob Dylan’s Bootlegs Vol. 12 ($2500), and one of the few vinyl copies of Paul McCartney’s III (selling for around $3700).
$2,380 is a steal when you take into consideration that the record at the top of that list is one of the very few copies of New Horizons — a 1970s experimental free jazz album recorded by Sounds of Liberation, which sold for $7,777.
It may seem like a great deal of cash now, but who knows — there’s a possibility that the value of this record may only climb from here.
Let’s just hope that nothing happens to it during shipping.
