Year: 1957
Record label: Blue Note BLP 1568
Worth Today: $11,612*

Hank Mobley’s Third Season wasn’t a widely produced album, with between 300 to 1,000 copies printed upon its release in 1957. That makes virtually every copy of the album relatively rare, but there’s one that stands out head and shoulders above the rest. 

Third Season had a lot of hard bop tracks from Mobley, who was regarded by Leonard Feather as the tenor saxophone’s “middleweight champion.” The “middleweight” designation came from the fact that Mobley’s tone was in between Coltrane’s aggressiveness and Getz’ mellowness. He had a subtle, laid-back, and commercially successful style.