Punk idols the Sex Pistols are more costly for vinyl devotees than The Rolling Stones, according to new research.

Experts at Record ­Collector magazine has calculated the cost of amassing a set of the rarest items for music fans.

And the God Save The Queen and Pretty Vacant hitmakers have proved to be one of the most costly combos in the music world with the average cost per record among their hard-to-find releases put at £698.

Unsurprisingly, the list is topped by Sir Paul ­McCartney and John Lennon's early group the Quarrymen, whose limited-edition releases always top any list of the most costly releases - the priciest being an acetate copy of That'll Be The Day/In Spite Of All The Danger which is estimated at £200,000.

Sir Paul, who owns the original copy, had 78 rpm and 45 rpm copies made up and these are priced at £10,000 each, bringing the average price for each of the three formats listed in the Rare Record Price Guide to a colossal £73,333.

Behind The Quarrymen in the list of the artists it would cost fans most to collect are The Beatles in second spot (£83,012 to buy a copy of each of the most valuable items), with the Sex Pistols in third position.

The magazine's researchers found that owning a copy of each of the 63 Sex Pistols releases in the guide would cost any potential collector a total of £44,002.

The list has thrown up a surprising entry, the Russian violinist Leonid Kogan, whose stereo LPs from the early 1960s change hands for huge amounts.