Five Days Left: Early Eminem Tapes and an “Infinite” LP Are on the Block at Wax Poetics. Here Is Every Lot and Every Bid.

A Detroit DJ's basement copy of Infinite, the only Soul Intent single ever pressed, and a Slim Shady promo tape that never went on sale. The clock stops Thursday afternoon.

Wax Poetics' "Rare Tapes & Records" collection closes on Thursday, October 8, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, and six of its lots are Eminem items that date from before, or right at, the moment he became Eminem. The sale went live September 17 and was reported by Brian McCollum at the Detroit Free Press last month. We went to the lot pages and the auction's own bid feed. Here is where things stood when we checked on the morning of Saturday, October 3.

The six Eminem lots, and where bidding stands

• Infinite, original 1996 LP (F.B.T. Productions, catalog WEB714V): $1,600 after 13 bids. Reserve not met.
• Soul Intent, "F#@!in' Backstabber" b/w "Biterphobia", sealed 1995 cassette single, graded 9 by Audio Media Grading: $1,350 after 10 bids. Reserve not met.
• Stretch Armstrong Presents Eminem's The Slim Shady LP Snippet Tape, sealed 1998 promo, AMG 7: $700 after 5 bids. Reserve not met.
• DJ Babe, The 7 Mile Album, Volumes 1 to 9, cassettes: $100 after 1 bid. Reserve met.
• The Slim Shady LP, sealed first-press double LP (1999): $500 after 3 bids. Reserve met.
• The Marshall Mathers LP, sealed first-press double LP (2000): $500 after 4 bids. Reserve met.

Wax Poetics does not publish estimates or reserve figures, only whether the reserve has been met, and if it is not, the lot ends without a sale. Expect those numbers to look very different by Thursday; they are a snapshot, not a forecast.

The Infinite record came straight from Em's hand

The headline lot has the best provenance story in the sale, and it is told on the lot page by its consignor, Ronier Golightly, the Detroit DJ known as DJ Babe and the founder of Motor City Popcorn. In 1996, DJ Los called him to the Hip Hop Shop on West Seven Mile: "Yo, you gotta come to the Hip Hop Shop. Man, this is a white dude up there killing it." Babe went, watched the kid win the battle, introduced himself, and was handed a record. "He handed me a piece of vinyl," Babe says. It went into his basement and, by his account, never came out: "I wasn't playing the record. So the record's still brand new."

The label credits Jeff and Mark Bass as executive producers, Denaun Porter as producer, "Slim" as co-producer, and Bassment Sounds in Ferndale as the studio. Wax Poetics' announcement notes the original $15.95 price. This copy is not signed or sealed, which matters for context: the Infinite that set the record in May was a sealed first press signed by Eminem in silver paint pen on the shrink wrap, and it sold at Goldin for $104,920 with premium, as we reported at the time. Nobody should expect Babe's copy to go there.

One number to treat carefully: the press run. Some coverage says exactly 500 copies were made, 250 on vinyl and 250 on cassette. Babe himself is not sure ("two hundred and fifty copies printed, something like that. Or five hundred"), and other accounts put the run near 1,000. Small is safe. Exact is not. Infinite was released November 12, 1996, so this sale closes five weeks before its 30th anniversary.

Infinite on Spotify.

Soul Intent: M&M, Proof, and the tape before the tape

The rarest thing in the sale may be the cheapest-looking. Soul Intent was the Detroit group that grew out of Bassmint Productions, with Marshall rapping as M&M, and in 1995 it pressed exactly one single on the local Mashin' Duck Records label. Per the lot page, the credits read: music by Manix, cuts by DJ Butterfingers, all lyrics written and performed by M&M, artwork by M&M, engineered by Mike Nice for Bassment Sounds. Proof guests on the A-side, and the insert prints a short piece credited to him:

Proof (insert text): "Backstabbers don't live too long. Around my way friendships betrayed. In the hood you die for that! So remember, the backstabber always loses in the end. A friend is a friend til the end, to eternity!"

Read that knowing what came later, including the fallout between the two around The Slim Shady LP, and it lands harder than a 1995 insert has any right to. A version of "Backstabber" would resurface on Infinite a year later. This copy has never been opened; it was graded and archived by AMG in April 2026.

A correction on consignors: some coverage implied all of these items came from DJ Babe. Per the lot pages, only the Infinite LP and the 7 Mile tapes are his. The Soul Intent single and the sealed Slim Shady LP and Marshall Mathers LP are consigned by a private collector identified only as Dimitrii.

The promo tape, the mixtapes, and the sealed LPs

The Stretch Armstrong snippet tape (catalog INT9P 6528) is 18 segments of album teasers cut between skits, sent to radio, press and retail and never sold. Some coverage dated it 1999. The lot is listed as a 1998 promo, and its J-card reads "Eminem debut album out 2/23," the date The Slim Shady LP arrived in 1999. DJ Babe's 7 Mile Album run was his Detroit answer to the 8 Mile soundtrack, built around Obie Trice, with Proof freestyling and Miz Korona on volume one. The sealed Slim Shady LP still has its Tower Records tag reading $13.22.

One more correction. Several headlines promised "hand-drawn early Eminem releases." The hand-drawn item in this sale is Moby's demo cassette from around 1987 or 1988, currently at $800. The nearest Eminem equivalent is the Soul Intent insert art credited to M&M. The collection has also grown since launch: a Depeche Mode demo tape was added September 23, and a rejected Bruce Springsteen "Dancing in the Dark" video master, which runs to October 22.

How to bid, and what winning really costs

You need a Wax Poetics account to bid; bid increments are set per lot. Any bid placed in the final 10 minutes extends that lot by 10 minutes, so there is no sniping at 2:59. Winners pay a 20% buyer's premium on top of the hammer price, plus shipping, insurance and any import duties, and must pay within 48 hours of the invoice. Sales are final, and items ship within about two weeks of the close. A $1,600 Infinite is a $1,920 Infinite before shipping.

The Bass Brothers' 2016 remix of "Infinite," built from the original multitrack. Jake Bass has described pulling those tapes.

After Julien's sold every pair of Em's auction sneakers in August, it is tempting to assume anything Eminem goes big. This sale is a different test. There is no signature on any of these lots and no celebrity consignor, just the paper trail of a Detroit kid calling himself M&M and handing his record to a DJ he had just met. Thursday at 3 p.m. we find out what that is worth.