THE BEATLES SOLID CENTRE HELP 1968 Pressing no central KT

	£		100
	$		132

I have collected records since I was very young, however Iincreasingly I have realised that I have far too many, and soI have been slowly trying to rationalise my extensive collection over the years, I have sold many major rarities over the years, from major BEATLES and 60s rarities, through PUNK and PROG ROCK, CLASSICAL and BLUES. Basically I've had alot of very rare records and in dribs and drabs have sold them off. I've never had negative feedback, and had many repeat customers.
I will only post completely insured and tracked.

Here we have...   

Up until 1967 in the UK,singles were overridingly pressed with "Push-out" centres,that is,they could be permenantly removed for use with Jukeboxes or some styles of players, occasionally for a handful of reasons they were pressed with a "SOLID CENTRE", and pre 1967 titles do show up to a lesser, or lesser-still extent! The reasons can range from seemingly a batch that didn't get stamped at EMI(Extremely rare!), a pressing contracted to another company who also put a batch through that didn't get stamped (Megarare!), or a later special order copy of a single that was no longer being stocked pressed post 1967 (Super Rare!).

This copy of Help! is of that last persuasion! What makes these so rare is that who, in late 1968 (which is when I'd date this copy to- I'll explain further down why!) that wanted an out of the charts Beatles single would go to a shopto order a copy in when there are literally millions of copies in circulation that you could pick up cheap, as it's yesterday's news! The Beatles are already into White Album territory! So for a start they'd need to be someone who wasn't interested in picking up a practically new condition second hand copy. Secondly most record shops would still have the odd old stock copy of many older hits, so it's pretty likely they'd have THE BEATLES, so they'd have to go to a shop that didn't have any of these! Lastly EMI still produced push-out copies of this same title at this time,so you'd have to be extremely lucky and hope that they sent one of the very few copies pressed at this time with a solid centre. Either way you look at this, you are staring at a hens-tooth right now!

To explain why I can date it to roughly late 1968/early 69, it has to do with centrally embossed tax codes around the central spindle hole,as the pricing index/tax codes became redundant in mid 1968 only records after this period could have sign of them (though sometimesthey did still carry them eg. some copiesof the WHITE ALBUM, or else carried them in the deadwax as in the case of this record), and later they started carrying the "Polo Ring" around the cntral soindle hole. So these factors date this record to quite a specific time window! To confuse things,EMIhad a tendency at this period to use up old labels, so here you see the earlier "Parlophone Rim" labels on a 1968/69 disc! Confusing, I know! Anyway, only a handful of people out there have a SOLID CENTRE Help! And even fewer have a 1968/69 non tax-coded copy, and even if you are one of the chosen few that does... there's still a very good chance that the copy youhave ins't in as good condition as this! 

DISC CONDITION:

SIDE 1: EX+ Beautiful in normal light, and literally just a handful of light with drawal hairlines visible only when angled into strong direct light.    

SIDE 2: VG+ Pretty much the same as side one, beautiful, but for two quite visible surface marks next to each other (could just be the same mark continued), audibly I could only notice 10 ticks on the fade out, and nothing more even when listening for it, visibly it does detract, but audio is strong and pure,other than the 10 ticks mentioned. A beautiful sliceof BEATLES rarity that only the top end collections will contain. Very rare!

BEAUTIFUL ORIGINAL CRISP SLEEVE.

DEADWAX INFO:

SIDE 1:

                KT

1                              RMA

     7XCE 18280-2.

SIDE 2:

                KT

6                              R

                                ML

     7XCE 18281-2.