Watch The Throne Vinyl Restocked Yesterday

News

By RC Staff

22 December 2023

Well, Christmas came a few days early for fans of Kanye and Jay-Z. A limited number of “Watch the Throne” picture disc vinyl records have been restocking over the last few weeks. After their initial pressing in 2011, these have been some of the most collectable records ever made, and have been incredibly hard to find since. This restock is a massive win for the collectors hunting for them and resellers looking to make a profit before the holidays.

What is the Watch the Throne Picture Disc?

So first, let’s clarify just what we’re talking about. Way back in 2011, Kanye West and Jay-Z teamed up to produce “Watch the Throne“. It was a big deal.

Charts were topped, records broken, tour stops sold out. Everyone was there for it, and everyone is still there for it; “Watch the Throne” remains one of the highest-selling rap albums of all time.

Naturally, that kind of fame also deserves an equally dope vinyl pressing. The “Watch the Throne” vinyl featured a striking “picture disc” design, with the two vinyl records featuring Jay-Z and Kanye’s faces snarling with a panther’s mouth.

The jackets are embossed with a gold foil design and the whole thing just looks cool as hell. The picture disc pressing has drawn criticism from some fans for degrading the sound quality, but for a collector, this is a holy grail.

Why is the Watch the Throne Vinyl so Expensive?

If you’re one of those collectors, you may have tried finding one of these records within the last decade. The prices were probably shocking. Every year we see a fair number of “Watch the Throne” picture discs change hands, and every year the prices go up.

Sealed versions have resold for around $500 through 2023, and we’ve even seen a few examples of them go for nearly $1,000.

In the years since its original pressing, there have been a ton of bootlegged versions. Various independent record shops and Etsy sellers have tried their hand at knocking off the record, but these are not nearly as popular as the OG discs.

Long story short, it is a very rare, very expensive, and very popular vinyl record.

Watch the Throne Vinyl Restock

And now you can hopefully understand why the restock is a big damn deal. People have been praying for a repress for years now, and it seems like they’re finally getting an answer.

On December 13, Walmart and Amazon listings for the “Watch the Throne” vinyl went up. Priced at $106, it was the first official repressing of the record since 2011. As you might have guessed, it sold out very quickly.

One week later, Walmart restocked the record again at $130. The same day, a number of independent record stores also received copies. We don’t have exact numbers for the stock, but judging by how quickly it went, there wasn’t much.

Will the Watch the Throne Vinyl Restock Again?

So what happens now? Well, if you’re reading this, chances are you missed out. Will the “Watch the Throne” vinyl restock?

Our guess is “probably”. Judging by the way these drops have gone, this was a decent sized repress. Walmart, Amazon, and the various record stores that received vinyl likely haven’t sold their entire stock just yet.

If you add in cancellations, shipping issues, and other reasons that an order might get pulled, a fair number of these records will be returning to retailers’ stocks within the coming weeks. Expect to see these records go up for sale at least one more time.

After that, it’s pretty hard to say what will happen. Will this become an annual tradition? Will these go back on ice for another decade? The answer is probably closer to the former than the latter.

If you’ve been tracking eBay sales, you’ve seen that prices have taken a hit. Nothing extreme, and these are extremely popular to resell, but the average listing has dropped around $100. Most sellers are asking for between and $400 for theirs.

The biggest losers here are the resellers that have been holding original 2011 pressings. Skipping through the Discogs “for sale” section, you can find a number of sellers asking upwards of $2,000 for their mint condition records. Now that the repressing cat is officially out of the repressing bag, it’s very unlikely that anyone will be willing to risk paying that much money for a record that could potentially restock.

And if you’re lucky enough to snag one of these records the next time they come into stock, we recommend selling quick. List it for a good price, obviously, but this isn’t something we recommend holding onto forever.

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