The rare one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album that Martin Shkreli purchased back in November 2015 was rather quietly sold on eBay on Friday night following 343 bids that we highly doubt were all legit. Shkreli purchased the album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, for $2 million just a tick under two years ago, and sold it for $1,025,100 this past week.
The description, which was last updated just a few days before Shkreli went to jail, after his bail was revoked for offering $5K for Hillary Clinton's hair in a very ill-advised Facebook post, stated that he wasn't selling the album because he needed money, and said he'd give half the winning bid to medical research. Like pretty much everything he does, at least in public, he did it with a hint of trademark dickishness.
As he wrote:
This is the one and only Wu-Tang album.
I decided to purchase this album as a gift to the Wu-Tang Clan for their tremendous musical output. Instead I received scorn from at least one of their (least-intelligent) members, and the world at large failed to see my purpose of putting a serious value behind music. I will be curious to see if the world values music nearly as much as I have. I have donated to many rock bands and rappers over the years to ensure they can continue to produce their art when few others would.
The sale comes just a few days after managers for both U-God and Method Man publicly disputed whether the 31-track double CD was actually an authentic Wu-Tang album.
"It’s not an authorized Wu-Tang Clan album," said U-God's manager, Domingo Neris. "It never was."
On that note Method Man's manager, James Ellis, added "When we did the verses, it was for a Cilvaringz album. How it became a Wu-Tang album from there? We have no knowledge of that."
Further still, Wu-Tang affiliate Killa Sin echoed that by claiming that Cilvaringz made it sound like it was an album for him (meaning for Cilvaringz, not Killa Sun) during their recording sessions.
Uh oh. Sounds like somebody who paid a public troll seven figures for a CD might end up suffering from buyer's remorse!
