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Rock
Hi everyone. First post from me and I’m hoping this is a reasonable question. Like many of us (I would hope), part of the experience of vinyl is buying used copies and checking Discogs for the cool details to narrow down what pressing it is and where from. Now I’m not concerned about getting OG 1st pressings but I’m always curious to see what I’ve picked up. Some albums (Deep Purple ‘In Rock’ for instance) have loads of notes on all the different versions out there which is really useful. I recently got a 1975 UK CBS press of Toys in the Attic (great album of course but that’s not the discussion). On Discogs there are no less than four different versions of this record all listed as UK pressings dated 1975 (the original release year) and on CBS. Now I know which one I have but I don’t know what order they were all pressed - I’m guessing probably not all in 1975 either. Does anyone know how I can find out more? I have tried Google but no luck.
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CB 271 is a price code for the French market and indicates that copy could be no earlier than 1978.
First of all, thank you very much for the info! Secondly, can I ask how you know and is there anywhere that I can look to find these things out other than Discogs? I’m sure I have more records like this where I’m curious about specific versions. Thanks again.
Discogs is pretty much the place to look for this info, though as with any crowd-sourced project, there are many inaccuracies and omissions.
The thing to understand is that dating specific pressings is mostly educated guesswork. While there are a few cases (e.g. UK Beatles pressings) which have been thoroughly documented by enthusiasts, and there’s less confusion with modern pressings, for the vast majority of older records, there is no solid information, only clues. And these clues vary by label and country.
So if we know a certain label changed their address or distributor in say, 1980, we can deduce that any record that references the newer info can be no older than 1980 regardless of the (P) and (C) dates on it. Same goes for a label updated their logo or design at any point. From the Discogs forums I learned about price codes which were mandatory on any item marketed in France, and how they changed in 1978 from one or two letters to a two letter code specific to a distributor (CB = CBS) and a three-digit number. Or say we can determine from the runouts that it was pressed at a certain plant (not always possible; some have no identifiable info), and that plant was only in operation for a certain period of time, obviously that record can be no earlier or later than that.
That is a great record. For me only bettered by their first.