Are old comedy records
worth any money?

The biggest comedy albums sold in huge numbers, and those copies are still around. Vaughn Meader's The First Family (Cadence CLP 3060, 1962) passed seven million copies by January 1963. Bob Newhart's The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (Warner Bros. W 1379, 1960) spent 14 weeks at No. 1 and won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Supply is only half of it. On Discogs, 2,674 members own The First Family and 52 want it. Its median sale is $2. Newhart's album: 3,070 owners, 99 wants, a $5 median. Bill Cosby's Why Is There Air? (Warner Bros. WS 1606, 1965) sells for $2. Redd Foxx's Laff of the Party, Volume 1 (Dooto DTL-214, 1956) sells for under $4. Plenty of people kept these records. Few people are looking for them.

Original US pressings of the most-asked-about comedy LPs, with the Discogs median and the best single sale on record.

Source: Discogs release-page sales statistics, October 2026. Where two US pressings are listed, the range covers both.

Laff (Los Angeles, 1967 to 1985) put out more comedy LPs than anyone in the 1970s, mostly Black comedians and party records. Its Richard Pryor albums were mostly released without his participation or approval. They are common and cheap.

Partee and Reprise. Pryor's 1974 album first came out on Partee, a Stax imprint. When Stax closed later that year, Pryor took back the masters and Reprise reissued it in November 1975. A Partee label means a first issue; Reprise means the reissue. His 1968 debut was on Reprise from the start.

Little David was started in 1969 by Flip Wilson and his manager Monte Kay, and Atlantic distributed it in the early 1970s. Carlin's Class Clown labels read “Dist. by Atlantic.”

Ode, Lou Adler's label, was distributed by A&M from 1970 to 1976, which covers the early Cheech & Chong albums.

Fantasy issued Lenny Bruce's first albums on red vinyl. Opaque red is the first pressing of Interviews of Our Times; translucent red is the second, and sells for about $5.

Clean, complete copies of the titles people want. The highs in the table are single best sales, mostly $30 to $70. Most copies land near the median.

Packaging that is all there. Big Bambú came in a jacket made to look like a pack of rolling papers, with a giant rolling paper inside. Copies that still have the paper are the collectible ones, and they are harder to find. Even so, the 1972 Terre Haute pressing has a $5.25 median, so the paper keeps a copy sellable more than it makes it valuable.

Crossover labels. Lenny Bruce Is Out Again was issued on Philles, the label Phil Spector co-founded in 1961. On Discogs, 105 members want a copy against 184 who own one, a far stronger ratio than The First Family's 52 to 2,674.

New limited sets. The comedy vinyl that sells for real money today is mostly new. “Weird Al” Yankovic's 2017 box Squeeze Box, his 14 studio albums plus a rarities record packed inside a replica accordion, has a Discogs median of $999.50. Our guide to new records worth more than old ones explains why.

Sort by label first. Laff, Dooto and the big Warner Bros. sellers can go in the keep-or-donate pile without much research. Pull the Partee Pryor, any Lenny Bruce, and anything with an insert or odd packaging, and check those one at a time.

Crown Vinyl identifies the pressing from the barcode or photos of the sleeve, grades condition from photos on the Goldmine scale, and estimates value from recent real sales, so a pile of $5 records is quick to confirm.