An “ultra rare” Ed Sheeran demo CD has sold at auction for £8000. Just 21 copies of the album, recorded when Sheeran was thirteen, are known to exist. And nineteen of those have previously been bought up by Sheeran himself in a bid to suppress the record.
Titled 'Spinning Man', the CD was the first lot in a music memorabilia auction held by the Essex-based Stacey's Auctioneers yesterday, with the auction house anticipating a sale somewhere between £5000 and £8000.
Recorded in December 2004 and January 2005, the fourteen song collection was one of a number of self-released records put out by Sheeran prior to him signing with Warner's Atlantic Records in 2011.
Although Sheeran has gone to great effort to try to ensure that no one ever hears 'Spinning Man', this is not the first time a copy has gone up for sale.
In 2020, a copy was sold for £50,000. This despite the fact that Sheeran's representatives insisted that particular copy was “officially counterfeit”. That was down to the title being handwritten on the CD itself, rather than appearing on a sticker, as was the case on the other 20 copies.
In his 2014 book 'Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journey', the musician wrote: “There are probably 20 copies of 'Spinning Man' in existence, and I have nineteen of them. I don't want anyone else to get hold of a copy! Most of the songs were about a girl called Claire. She was my first love when I was thirteen”.
It remains to be seen what the new owner does with the CD, but Sheeran is presumably hoping that none of the tracks make their way online.