We’re celebrating Studio One’s release of Freddie McKay’s ‘Picture On The Wall: Deluxe Edition’ with the top selling records on the site of all time under the Reggae genre banner. This Top 10 encompasses a few different styles with a lot of emphasis on earlier ones like Rocksteady and Ska. I’m not exactly a reggae expert, so I did my best here as everything was totally new to me. Dig in and let me know what you think. ‘Picture On The Wall: Deluxe Edition’ is available exclusively through Studio One’s Discogs Marketplace. Here are the top 10 most expensive reggae records ever sold on Discogs:
$3000 – Alton Ellis – Mouth A Massey / Ska Beat
I don’t honestly know that much about ska. I really like it though, especially older stuff like this. What wave of Ska are we on now? Twelve? When I was a kid in the ’90s, stuff like Mighty Mighty Bosstones was big. I’m not good at this. c:
$1947.52 – The Soul Vendors – Happy Ogan
This is a rocksteady cover of the Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez song.
$1686.72 – Anthony “Sangie” Davis And Lee Perry / Devon Irons & Dr. Alimantado – Words / Vampire
Sometimes it’s easy to tell based on the sound how much a record is worth, but sometimes it’s not. It’s a great sound, but there are a lot consistently high coin sales here.
$1558.02 – Jackie Mittoo & The Soul Brothers – Midnight Hour
Another rare rocksteady cover. I dig it. The submission needed a little love, but nothing a quick edit didn’t fix.
$1493.10 – The Versatiles / Val Bennett – Worries / Hound Dog Special
I bet this is actually cool. So many of these have the worst samples available online. Please more 64K mp3s that sound like they were recorded over shortwave.
$1349.38 – The Mebusas – Mebusas Vol 1 – Blood Brothers
This is a Nigerian record that primarily gets labelled as Afro Psych. Even though it’s not exactly what I had in mind when making this list, I felt it was good enough to include.
$1199.99 – Unknown Artist – Untitled
This is probably the first and possibly only time an Unknown Artist – Untitled type release has made it to a top selling list. I was unable to find any samples of this, but I do like dub, so I’m assuming it’s amazing.
$1124.48 – Steve Dudu Black – Happy Birthday To ‘U’
This record is primarily pitched as Afro-Boogie and is really good, but apparently has some reggae overlap. None of the samples provided really showed that, but it’s a cool record.
$1124.48 – Val Bennett – Atlas
This is a little more up my alley. The saxophone work here reminds me a lot of the sax in “I Put A Spell On You“.
$1122.23 – Demon Fuzz – Roots And Offshoots Ah yes, the mythical second Demon Fuzz record. This is good and expensive, but good. Someone reissue this, please.
