The Beatle Collector Part 3 – Or Circle 0997606 and A 0325125 Or SWBO 101

Focused on only buying officially released studio albums, and with having 5 already:

Abbey Road (Reisssue unopened) – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (Reisssue unopened) – Beatles ’65 – Magical Mystery Tour – and Hey Jude (though not an official studio release, but a comp)

… I was set to begin my Beatle revolution.

I took to E-bay to find what the world had to offer me.

I made my first target The White Album.

TheBeatlesWhite Album

This was my first taste of the myriad complexities of Beatle record collecting. First of all there were highly disparate prices. The differences are what make things so interesting. There is the Apple version and the Capitol version. There are high numbered versions and low number versions. There is of course a UK and USA version. There are top loading sleeves and side loading sleeves. There was a whole range of available inserts too. It originally came with a poster and 4 color photos of the boys.

When I owned The White Album in my youth, it had no poster and no pics and no numbers either that I recall, so mine must have been used or some type of reissue. Not sure where I would have gotten a used album in those days. Hmm… at any rate I loved it and it was a diverse enough collection to be perfect for now.

I watched several auctions to get a feel for the price then put my toe in the water and bid on one. Fail. It went in the end for an outrageous price and I had no shot. Then I checked out the sold listings. That told a very different story. There were copies going for decent prices. Right place at the right time holds a lot of value on E-bay. So, I targeted auctions that ended at bizarre times of the night/morning and I bid my top dollar on them, but less than what the average was. I bid on one with all inserts and one without. Then I went to bed.

Results?

I won both. That was not what I had in mind. Lol. Another valuable lesson in E-baydom.

I’m not the only one with multiple copies though. Check out this guy. Interesting.

http://www.dustandgrooves.com/rutherford-chang-we-buy-white-albums/

white

He also has superimposed 100 White Album covers on top of each other to create a mosaic of all the marks and names and doodles and such found on the covers. Pretty cool if you ask me.

tumblr_muzs4xxo2i1sef51eo1_1280

http://www.bohemian.com/northbay/the-beatles-x-100/Content?oid=2518761

http://100whitealbums.tumblr.com/

He has also recorded 100 of them playing all at once. Check that out if you dare. Not for the audio-squeamish.

So my albums arrived a bit later and the first thing I noticed about the 2 of them was that the numbers were prefixed with an “A” on one and a circle on the other.

(Circle) 0997606

(A) 0325125

I knew they were numbered, or not numbered, but I didn’t realize there were variations in the numbering itself. This sent me down the rabbit hole for information about the album itself. This led me to this page.

http://www.whitealbumregistry.com/

If you have a copy of The White album that Rutherford Chang hasn’t bought, you can register it here. I registered mine, and I found a treasure trove of information about the album.

white album stats