However, that’s the starting price a mysterious Helenburgh seller on eBay has set for a handful of songs on a vinyl seven-inch.

That seven-inch – Three Kinds of Escapism – is from Sunday Painters, a Wollongong band from the late 1970s and early 1980s, that was making weird and strange sounds in an era where most local acts were cranking out covers of top 40 songs.

The band is largely unknown to people in Wollongong – and elsewhere – but has a cult following around the world.

And that’s a cult following eager to snap up any of the band’s absurdly hard to vinyl or cassette releases.

Which is why Wollongong music historian Warren Wheeler reckons our mystery Helensburgh seller will have no trouble finding a buyer keen to part with $500.

“I don’t doubt it will sell for that – if not a lot more,” Wheeler said.

“I suspect that someone somewhere will be wanting that. Sadly it’s not going to be me.”

If $500 is too steep, then the same seller – who did not respond to emails – also has the rare Sunday Painters’ first single going for $299 and an album and EPs going for $149.95 each.

The cheapest item – a seven-incher called Painting By Numbers – will set you back $100.

Wheeler says the band’s original releases do appear on auction sites from time to time and they’re always snapped up quickly because of their scarcity.

“Over the years as I’ve been watching those auction sites, I’ve seen those prices go up,” Wheeler says.

“To see this particular item at $500 is part of that ongoing trend and I’m not surprised that they’re getting to those prices.”

Not even the fact a US indie label put out a CD re-release of the band’s first three singles – including the one with the $500 price tag – will put a dampener on the desire for the original articles.

But why are these releases from a little-known band so sought after?

Part of it is that most of the releases are designed as works of art with multiple covers, handwritten sleeves and – in one case – drops of a band member’s blood.

In terms of the music, Wheeler says their discordant fuzzed sound were ahead of their time.

 “The sounds that they produced were very much a reflection of growing up in an industrial city, which Wollongong very much was back when they existed,” he says.

“They were able to draw inspiration from their immediate environment and turn it into an art form.”