These Rare '80s Albums Are Now A Collector's Jackpot

Some of the greatest and best-selling albums ever made were released in the 1980s. But now, enough time has passed to allow many of these hits from the era of arena rock, hair metal, and synth-pop to grow scarce and therefore valuable. In fact, some of these '80s albums are so rare that they're worth a fortune over here in the 21st century.

Full-length vinyl records began to fade in popularity throughout the '80s. Not only would cassettes and CDs force out records as the musical physical media of choice, but vinyl inside cardboard has a tendency to degrade over the span of four decades. Add those natural factors to some records that are already rare, because they were produced in a limited run by an independent label, canceled before a true release, or had an original cover quickly replaced, and you get albums lurking out there in thrift store crates, basements, garages, and attics that could command hundreds or thousands of dollars. Here then are tough to locate albums by big '80s stars like Prince, Guns N' Roses, Queen, and Mötley Crüe that are all worth a lot of cash.

Warner Bros. Records was prepared to roll out "The Funk Bible" in December 1987, the latest collection of next-level pop-rock-R&B by superstar Prince. Later renamed "The Black Album" in part for its stark and simple cover, Prince decided days before the street date that he wouldn't or couldn't release the record, on account of how he realized, under the influence of the drug Ecstasy, that it was an object imbued with evil, according to "Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince." At Prince's request, Warner Bros. Records undertook a massive destructive effort, eradicating the 500,000-copy print run, an operation which the artist reportedly offered to fund. However, an unknown but relatively small number of copies escaped the burn pile, and bootlegs of "The Black Album" quickly and widely became available, and an official version was finally issued in 1994.

Legitimate copies of "The Black Album" on vinyl from its 1987 run surface every few years, and when they do, Prince collectors with fat wallets will pay top dollar. In August 2018, record trading site Discogs reported its highest-ever sale at the time, when an authentic version of "The Black Album" sold for $27,500. That transaction came on the tail of a copy moving for just over $42,000. More recently, in 2022, a German edition fetched $11,260 at RR Auction, while the same house negotiated an unopened American-pressed one for $32,103 in 2024.

Guns N' Roses is one of the most important rock bands of the '80s, and they earned that status essentially by virtue of 1987's "Appetite for Destruction," which sold more than 18 million copies and, in 2008, was the best-selling debut LP ever. As such, the cover, featuring illustrated skeletons made to look like the band's five members, arranged on a cross, is one of the most-viewed sleeves of all time. But that's not the cover that Guns N' Roses wanted. The LP was supposed to be housed in a reprint of its namesake: Robert Williams' 1978 painting "Appetite for Destruction," which showed a woman in not much clothing being viciously assaulted by a robot topped with a bear trap, who in turn is being attacked by a knife-wielding flying monster. Once several significant retail chains got a look at the album, they threatened not to stock it, forcing Geffen Records to replace it in favor of the Billy White Jr.-drawn take.

Some samples of the original issue, with the violent imagery-laden cover intact, escaped the clutches of Geffen Records. When they appear on Discogs, they might pull in an average of about $345. The most anyone has ever paid on the record-trading site for an authentic "Appetite for Destruction": $1,095.

There will never be another band like Queen, and they've got the hits to prove it. In 1980, only seven years into their recording career, the theatrical hard rock band led by Freddie Mercury allowed Elektra Records to package many of their biggest singles from the 1970s onto one vinyl record, reasonably titled "Greatest Hits." This LP was never released for public consumption. Also in 1980, Queen provided the entire soundtrack to the sci-fi opus "Flash Gordon," and Elektra decided to prioritize that album of original songs.

In 1981, a Queen "Greatest Hits" album was produced and sold well, but it's not the same one as the 1980 project. The sequence of songs is slightly different, and the latter LP includes "Under Pressure," "Flash," and "You're My Best Friend," for example. If collectors have a copy of Queen's first best-of album in their stacks, another way to tell they've got the very rare, earlier scrapped and pulled version is if it bears the catalog number 5E-517. Hard to find because it was never officially allowed out of the pressing plant, the 1980 "Greatest Hits" is an expensive collector's item. In 2007, one sold for $999 on eBay.

Mötley Crüe lay the foundation for the hair metal scene that would come to dominate rock in the 1980s, emerging in 1981 with its first album, the hard and sleazy "Too Fast for Love." A weird thing you didn't know about Mötley Crüe: They released that same debut album twice. Initially issued on the band's own label, Leathür Records, the LP got a remaster and a new pressing in 1982 after Elektra Records brought Mötley Crüe onto its roster. The virtually identical second version went on to sell more than a million copies in the U.S., overshadowing the 20,000 or so moved in its original Leathür Records form. 

Of that huge pile of independently distributed records, the first run consisted of only about 900 copies, and it can be differentiated from subsequent pressings because "Mötley Crüe" is written across it in white letters, differing from the red used later. One of those albums is hard to come by, and thus going to cost record collectors a lot of money should they ever want to buy this piece of Mötley Crue memorabilia. On Discogs, they've sold for as much as $8,700, but generally wind up in the $250 range.