10 Rarest Albums In Existence

1. Wu-Tang Clan - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin – $2 million

Wu-Tang Clan de facto leader RZA on ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’: "I definitely read every article about it. It’s kind of crazy. The record has become an entity, very different from a lot of albums. It’s like the Mona Lisa. It’s got its own folklore."

Looking to do something different with their next record in 2015, RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan revealed they would only create one copy of OUATIS and sell it to whoever the highest bidder was. Streaming had already taken over the music industry, and this was Wu-Tang’s way of creating something entirely individual and tangible that would only age better with time.

Originally, the Clan tried to enforce a rule that the buyer couldn’t release the album to the public for at least 88 years after purchase, but eventually eased off, granting total freedom to the buyer. Meaning if the buyer wanted to release it on YouTube for free, they could. Or even take a sledgehammer to it.

The Wu-Tang Clan sold the 31-track, 128-minutes long album at auction, destroying all duplicates afterwards. The only two people who had heard it in full at that point were RZA and his co-producer. Speculation grew on who bought the record, many believing it was Quentin Tarantino, friend/mentor of RZA.

Later than year it was identified the eventual buyer as Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli, who had paid $2 million. Martin was well-known in the media and detested for raising the price on a drug to treat the disease cystinuria and later becoming more despised for again raising the price from $13.50 to $750 for each pill to treat the Aids related toxoplasmosis .

In a weird turn of events, the feds now have the Wu-Tang album after they seized Shkreli’s assets when he was convicted of security fraud in August 2017.