Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records

Before MP3s, CDs, & cassette tapes, even before LPs or 45s, the world listened to music on 78rpm records—those fragile, 10-inch shellac discs. While vinyl records have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, good 78s are exponentially harder to come by & play. A recent eBay auction for the only known copy of a particular record topped out at $37,100. Do Not Sell at Any Price explores the rarified world of the 78rpm record—from the format’s heyday to its near extinction—and how collectors & archivists are working frantically to preserve the music before it’s lost forever.

Through fascinating historical research & beguiling visits with the most prominent 78 preservers, Amanda Petrusich offers both a singular glimpse of the world of 78 collecting & the lost backwoods blues artists whose 78s from the 1920s & 1930s have yet to be found or heard by modern ears. We follow the author’s descent into the oddball fraternity of collectors—including adventures with Joe Bussard, Chris King, John Tefteller, Pete Whelan, & more—who create & follow their own rules, vocabulary, & economics & explore the elemental genres of blues, folk, jazz, & gospel that gave seed to the rock, pop, country, & hip-hop we hear today. From Thomas Edison to Jack White, Do Not Sell at Any Price is an untold, intriguing story of preservation, loss, obsession, art, & the evolution of the recording formats that have changed the ways we listen to (and create) music.

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Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker & the author of three books. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction & has been nominated for a Grammy Award.