Select historical prices for an exact datetime - MySQL

Question

I have a price_list table where I store historical prices for each item.

columns are -  id, name, price, start_date, item_id

When a price is changed, a one new row is inserted with a current start_date. (Start_date is a datetime format).

Now I need to select prices of all items for an exact datetime. Problem is that this query is slow (1.058 sec):

SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM price_list h WHERE start_date <= '2013-12-15 12:14:18' ORDER BY start_date DESC) a GROUP BY item_id

Very slow is a GROUP BY. Without it it takes 0.075 sec, but each item (item_id) is there a multiple times.

bad: SELECT * FROM price_list h WHERE start_date <= '2013-12-15 12:14:18' ORDER BY item_id, start_date DESC

Please, can this query be rewritten to be quicker?

Answer 1

Duration goes to 1 sec when I'm selecting name column. But when I use this query, time is only 0.094 sec:

SELECT h.* FROM (SELECT * FROM (SELECT id, item_id FROM price_list x WHERE start_date <= '2013-12-15 12:14:18' ORDER BY start_date DESC) a GROUP BY item_id) b LEFT JOIN price_list h ON h.id = b.id

Thank you, Ryan!