Collecting the Pistols on vinyl proves pretty pricey

Record Collector magazine has calculated the cost of amassing a set of the rarest items for music fans.

And the band who recorded God Save The Queen and Pretty Vacant have proved to be one of the most costly in the music world with the average cost per record among their hard-to-find releases put at £698.

The list is topped by Beatles precursor the Quarrymen whose limited edition money-can’t-buy releases are always at the top of any list of the most costly releases – the priciest being an acetate copy of That’ll Be The Day/In Spite Of All The Danger which is estimated at £200,000.

Sir Paul, who owns the original copy, had 78 and 45 rpm copies made up and these are priced at £10,000 each, bringing the average price for each of the three formats listed in the Rare Record Price Guide to £73,333.

The magazine’s researchers found that owning a copy of each of the 63 Sex Pistols releases which are in the guide would cost any potential collector a total of £44,002.

The list has a surprising entry, Russian violinist Leonid Kogan, whose stereo LPs from the early 1960s change hands for huge amounts. Snapping up all eight of his most collectable records would cost £8,200.

Behind The Quarrymen in the list are The Beatles (£83,012 to buy a copy of each of the most valuable items), with the Pistols third.