Once MP3s became truly viable, it was a relief to anyone seeking storage space. No longer did you need cheap plastic towers filled with cheaper plastic squares to store all the music you held dear. With an afternoon and a CD drive, you could rip all your most personally important songs to your computer, and toss the world’s noisiest trash bag directly on the curb. Sure, you might have had a passing thought that they’d be worth something someday, but it’s hard to argue that, especially at the time, a collection of spiderweb-cracked jewel cases felt like a “forever” sort of thing, holding none of the charm of vinyl.
Well, depending on your collection, you might have beefed up. Here are eight CDs worth a pretty penny nowadays…
Taylor Swift: Teardrops on My Guitar (Promo)
Big Machine Records
Most of this list is occupied, understandably, by older acts, but that doesn’t mean fairly recent CDs might not hold some value. In this case, it’s promotional copies of Taylor Swift’s Teardrops on My Guitar. Driven, I assume, by what I would call a “heavily enthusiastic” fanbase, a promo copy of the album has sold for over $1,200 on eBay.
Bob Dylan: 50th Anniversary Collection
Columbia Records
One of the CDs that you might actually have seen some collector’s value in was this anniversary album from Bob Dylan. It’s rare, since only 100 copies were made, but if you were a big Dylan fan, it’s one you may have sought out. If you managed to get one, and it survived a couple closet cleanings, it can be worth over $2,500.
Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels Japan Tour 1990
Columbia Records
In looking up prices for this list, I can make one recommendation: Any CDs you might own that are from Japan, I would Google. For whatever reason, they seem to make up a good portion of the rarest compact discs — the less made, the better. If you were a Rolling Stones fan in search of live performances, and ended up with a copy of their promotional 1990 Steel Wheels Japan Tour CD, you’ve got the circular equivalent of 2,000 pounds sterling.
Eminem: Slim Shady EP
Studio 8
Underground rap fans tend to be avid collectors. No one in their right mind would still consider Eminem anywhere near underground, but at one point, he was just a strange, disturbed man from Detroit, and CDs from before he hit it big are worth their weight in gold. Specifically, the “Slim Shady EP,” both rare and relevant since it was the debut of his Slim Shady alter-ego, is worth an absolutely insane $12,000.
Nirvana: Pennyroyal Tea
Geffen
If you were a Nirvana superfan before the death of Kurt Cobain, you might own a single worth a pretty penny. The single version of Pennyroyal Tea was released in April 1994, but it didn’t stay on shelves long. The reason? The aforementioned self-inflicted fatality of the lead singer, which led to the album being recalled. If you picked it up during the brief window it was available, you lucked in on a CD worth between $1,500 and $2,000 today.
Coldplay: The Safety EP
Coldplay
I’d bet a comparable amount of money to this album’s current value that Coldplay was not a band you’d expect to see on this list, but here we are. The Safety EP, Coldplay’s first ever public album, was limited to 500 copies, and if you happened to own one, you’d be sitting on over a thousand bucks.
Suikoden II (PlayStation)
Konami
Lest we forget that music wasn’t the only media burned onto CDs, we’ll include one entry from CD-based gaming titan PlayStation. If you happen to have a copy of Suikoden II, a Japanese RPG that found itself mostly forgotten on a system full of them, I’d recommend making your way over to eBay. Copies can be worth over $1,300 a pop today.