$510 eBay Abbey Road JPN ???

[FabFourFan]

Check this out - is this possible???

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=851667616&r=0&t=0&showTutorial=0&ed=1016654521&indexURL=0&rd=1

It looks like the bids were legit.

What's funny is that I don't ever remember seeing one of these "Factory Sealed" when it was available.
Sometimes, it would be in a resealable sleeve, but never really "sealed".
Does anyone remember seeing one of these actually sealed somehow?

[jligon]

The "Holy Grail" of any CD is, most often, inferior to the average Lp. What are these people possibly thinking? Will this still be a "collectible" when CD, as a format, has bitten the dust? Sure, that may not be in the immediate future but I highly doubt that we'll ever see a format last anywhere near as long as Lps did.

Do you think CDs will having the staying power of vinyl after it has been superceded by another format? I don't. I can see this Japanese Abbey Road in a bargain bin next to the lasderdiscs.

Can you imagine what you could purchase in music right now for $500?

[Michael]

There will always be a Beatles Collector willing to pay for that CD no matter what happens to the CD format, which I believe will be here for a very, very long time. 20 years and counting....

[jligon]

Originally posted by Michael
There will always be a Beatles Collector willing to pay for that CD no matter what happens to the CD format, which I believe will be here for a very, very long time. 20 years and counting....

I agree that there will always be a Beatles collector willing to pay some amount, but $500? $300? Even $100 if nobody is listening to CDs anymore? I've seen this thing sell for less than $50 in the last 6 months. What if a true "Holy Grail" CD of Abbey Road comes out? What happens to the value of this Japanese version then?

A similar example is VHS video tapes. Two years ago there were a number of collectible out of print VHS titles that demanded high dollars on Ebay. Now with DVD in the forefront, I've noticed that many of these once collectible VHS tapes have come way down in value.

I'm curious as to what makes you believe that CDs will be around for a very, very long time. True, I don't think they'll be replaced by SACD, DVD-A, or any other format that currently exists but don't you think that (just like computer technology) we will see an ever-decreasing length of life of each subsequent audio format?

Lps about 35 years (at the most), if I'm not mistaken, as the primary format. If CDs are nearing their third decade as the primary format, how much longer do you envision?

Anyway, the original point is that $500 for this CD is a bad investment. If the individual is buying it because he really wants to listen to the best available CD version of Abbey Road, that's one thing (and if that's the case, he probably could have had one of these guys burn it for him for a few bucks!), but as an "investment," I see know sense in paying that kind of money. There'll be another one up for auction this week!

[Richard Feirstein]

The Sony/Phillips CD patent is about to expire. Sony is offering SACD to anyone for free if they continue to purchase a CD license.

[bearman16]

I had this back in the early days. From what I can remember, all
the early Japanese cd's had that paper wrapper on the left side.
I think all the early discs were manufactured by Toshiba. Also have Stones and Dark Side I bought around the same time look similar. It looks legit from what I can remember, then again that was 17 years ago.

[Bill]

Mine came sealed, with the paper obi-like insert on the left of the disc case. I special-ordered it at a small mom and pop music store in downtown DC (long gone) after hearing through the grapevine (no Internet then!) that it was actually available. When it arrived, I remember just holding it in my hand during the interminable period between my lunch hour and when I could go home and finally enjoy the perfect group in perfect sound forever.

For the next few months, I played it extensively and used it as a demo disc for all my pals, who were equally enthralled. Then, one dark day, just for the hell of it, I compared it to my first day issue British pressing that I had bought in my college days (helped the store clerk unpack it from the box from Britain, but that's another story) and have played the CD a handful of times since.

Moral: in my opinion, while it's pretty cool to have the CD for its historical value and I'll never part with it, $510? You gotta be nuts! Now, if they issue it on SACD, I'm first in line, even though the vinyl will probably cut that to shreds. It's a disease, I tell you.

[Paul L.]

I bought the Japanese Abbey Road CD when it first came out, and still have it and its obi strip.

It had what I think is the normal kind of outer sleeve for Japanese items--a thin plastic cover with about an inch overlap in back. The hinge was a little sticky and so you could open and reclose it numerous times and it would still stick.

But, this was not like an American sealing, and definitely not shrink wrapped. One could legitimately call an Abbey Road "still sealed" with this around it, but the buyer could never know if it had been opened.

I'm no Japanese LP expert, only have bought a few, but they had the same kind of thing. The idea, as I've read, is that this way the LP could be visually inspected at the store before purchase.

[Paul L.]

Speaking of Abbey Road, some guy in town brought in an acetate of it to a small record shop in my home town a few weeks before it was released. The owner offered him $100 for it but was turned down. But the guy did make some open reel dubs of the acetate, and my brother got one of those. So that's the way I heard it up until first day of release.

I remember being astonished with the $100 offer--big money to a kid in 1969.

The store owner used to send an employee 2 hours away to Cleveland the first day of release of the Beatles albums and solo Beatles albums so that he could get a bunch of copies from their distributor immediately and sell them that first day. That way they got a day or two jump on the competition who waited for the records to be delivered.

[ATR]

I have fond memories of seeing that edition of Abbey Road in the little CD shop on JFK St. in Harvard Square, Cambridge MA. It was selling for $100 when it came out. At that time the typical price for an import CD was $30, and I never liked to go over $20 for anything. I made a few exceptions. Now all those Blue Notes are available for <$10 and they sound just as good as those imports did and do, I'll bet. There is a phenomenology of the market for any collectible which ends at the yard sale, of which recorded music is one example. The question is, does the Japanese disc have anything more than value as a rarity? I.E. was it mastered from a better quality source by a particularly good engineer, etc.? It's amazing how they get us to buy the same music over and over, sometimes for more money but often for less. And we all know how much it costs to make the darn things. Speaking of which, does anyone know if that new Creedence box can hold a candle to Hoffman's work?

[MagicAlex]

I was lucky enough to buy this jewel while living in europe around 1987-88. As I recall it was sealed with OBI. It cost around $18-20 at the time. The sound on this one blew away the standard Capitol/EMI release! I also was able to snag the Beatles Blue Box Collection that same day $38 new on vinyl. Needless to say it was a wonderful day for me!

The reason that the CD brings in so much money with collectors is that a very small amount of these were pressed before being recalled. It seems that they jumped the gun and released the product before they had full rights to the recordings.

[Bob Lovely]

All,

And just think, I could add that Obi strip to my collection of Obi strips....

Bob :D

[Joel Cairo]

Well, those of you who are vinyl collectors know the mentality of purchasing something that's in "still-sealed" condition... it's tough to find items that are still in that condition, especially 20 years later.

Although I would be leery of purchasing this item for a premium price this way, when they were marketed at our local Tower Records store, they came into the stores looking just as the auctioned one does, with the obi on the outside, and sealed in shrinkwrap. The thing is, though, that wrap was almost certainly applied after the discs were inported into the US, as it wasn't unusual to see other Japanese-market discs that had no wrap on them at all, or which had been put into the familiar 2-piece plastic "clamshell" containers, with the booklet on top, and the rest of the disc beneath. But in my view, on an absolute value basis, neither the shrinkwrap nor the clamshell package truly qualifies as original packaging.

The **real** tough part of "Abbey Road" packaging to obtain is the obi, which many people tended to discard as soon as they got home... the fools!! :) that's the largest component of the value for this CD, which by itself is rare, but not all **that** rare.

Sure sounds good, though.. that disc, the "Wings Greatest" and the Pink Floyd DSOTM that they issued at the same time are some of my faves.

-Kevin

[Bob Lovely]

All

I knew that I kept all those Obi strips for a reason. I must have over 400 of them. Most are CD Obis but I have retained all the LP Obis as well including the one for the Abbey Road Toshiba-EMI vinyl pressing.

Bob

[Todd Fredericks]

Joel,

This may seem like a silly question but why is the "obi" such a prized possesion for collectors?

Todd

[Joel Cairo]

Because it's highly disposable.... and most people did, rather than do the sane thing (at least from **my** point of view), which is to preserve as much of the original packaging as possible.

I found very early on that you could either a) unfold them and put them (carefully) under the tray-- which also eliminated any fading due to light exposure; or b) fold them to wrap around the **booklets** (making sure to cover the small piece of adhesive on them with scrap cellophane), which were then put back in place in the jewel case.

I always preferred b), since the wrapped obis look kinda cool around the edge of the booklet, and were generally protected from light exposure.

-Kevin

[FabFourFan]

Originally posted by Paul L.
I bought the Japanese Abbey Road CD when it first came out ...
It had what I think is the normal kind of outer sleeve for Japanese items --
a thin plastic cover with about an inch overlap in back.
The hinge was a little sticky and so you could open and reclose it numerous times and it would still stick.Yes, that's exactly how I remember it.

In fact, I still have the obi and the original bag (saved in a baggie).

Anal-mania, that's what it is! :D