Five rare vinyl copies of Prince's 'Black Album' have been found in an attic by a former Warner Records employee.

Three of them have since been sold for over £15,000 ($20,000) each by recordmecca.com

Half a million copies of the 1987 album were recalled and destroyed after the singer became convinced that the album was 'evil'.

Eventually, the label were allowed to sell cassette and CD versions but never vinyl ones. 

The former employee, who remains anonymous, was searching for vinyl records to give to his daughter who had just bought her first record player. 

Jeff Gold, who runs the online store and who used to work at Warner Bros told Billboard:

"I naturally assumed it was a fake but wrote a polite response back that one really couldn’t tell if it was genuine unless you opened up the record and inspected it, and that almost all of them were unfortunately not authentic."

Gold then realised he had worked with the owner at the record label:

"I couldn't believe it. In a few minutes we were talking on the phone for the first time in many years.

"I sold the first one with a single phone call to a client".