Grail orig 2003 Radiohead Hail to the Thief M 2x vinyl; M Gatefold sleeve/inners

	£		96
	$		127

Grail original first pressing release 2003 Radiohead Hail to the Thief  double Mint 12" vinyl; Mint Gatefold sleeve and inner sleeves. Condition is new ie never played and owned from new. I listened to some of the tracks online and realised I never got round to playing this album (after buying it to add to Kid A and Amnesiac). In answer to a question and so you know that this is the original and  not a re-press, the black and white label on the front "Radiohead Hail to the Thief"  is a sticker. 

This is the highly desirable first pressing in heavyweight 180g vinyl. Note it is an audiophile 45rpm pressing so should have a higher dynamic range and is an immaculate copy.

Like other later Radiohead material I guess you either love this album or hate it. Sadly I never played it to find out! Consequently, like an embarrassing amount of vinyl I purchased in the 90s, it has sat on my record shelving for nearly 20 years - but at least it has been preserved for someone who might appreciate it more. I am listing all my original Radiohead vinyl: Kid A (10" 2000 - sold); Amnesiac (10" 2001 - sold) and Hail to the Thief (12" 2003).

I've taken photos of all sides of the sleeves and vinyl in high resolution - the reflections are of my camera but hopefully you can see clearly the  mint condition of the media. Mint copies are going for well over £100 but I'm starting bidding at £65 so you may get lucky and pick up a bargain - I don't know how you would get hold of a better original copy unless it was still sealed (and I can't honestly remember if this ever was). 

Using the Goldmine standard I follow the principle that no vinyl is mint if it has ever been played - this qualifies as.

Vinyl Side A: M

Side B: M

Side C: M

Side D: M

Album sleeve is mint on all sides (there are no marks or dents on any of the edges) and so are the innersleeves.

From a pet and smoke free home.

A respectful note about offers

I've done my research on pricing. Of course a record is only worth what someone is prepared to pay but records are collectable and original pressings are like first editions of books - people are prepared to pay more for them than re-issues. I set the starting price based below the typical selling prices on eBay and another well know discography seller. I allow offers for those purchasers who are really keen to get a much sort after copy, don't want to wait 10 days to the end of the auction and don't want to risk being 'sniped' in the last seconds of bidding. I set the offer level close to typical selling price for records of a similar grade (which for most of my 'Holy Grail' albums is near the maximum. Please don't make offers below the starting price or ask for combined prices for multiple records that attempt a similar thing. They will be automatically rejected without me knowing it and, if this happens three times, you cannot make an offer for rest of the time of the auction. 

Special packaging and delivery

The record will be packaged in a Defendapack MusicMax TWISTS mailer. For plain inner sleeves I will leave the vinyl in the inner sleeve. For printed sleeves, I take the vinyl out though it is still protected by its plastic record bag. I will also use additional internal stiffeners and supplementary bubble wrap for the open edges and four corners in the mailing box and the sleeve and record will also be protected by a PVC sleeve. This has worked really well so far according to my buyers.

As a valuable item this will be dispatched with Royal Mail 1st Class special delivery before 1pm for the base Royal Mail price of £8.85.

I make nothing on shipping and the packaging is done at my own cost.

 You can also pick up for free from East Grinstead, West Sussex and I will also post worldwide using Royal Mail.

As Royal Mail will only pick up 5 packages a day from my home, I'm going to list up to 5 records at a time with the same auction end date so that you should (Royal Mail being compliant) be in receipt of the record two mornings later (if you are in the UK). That means auctions from Sunday to Thursday (as the Thursday-ending ones should be delivered Saturday morning) and potentially 25 records a week - though I doubt I can maintain that pace!

For multiple purchases, I will combine postage where possible (there is a limit with Royal Mail weights but I'll do my best to save you money - for comparison; below a kilo Special Delivery Next Day before 1pm costs £8.85 and this will normally do about 2 to 3 single albums albums. Between 1 and 2 Kilos it costs £11.05, which is up to about 6 single albums).

Following a number of requests, I'm now using Royal Mail International Tracked and Signed for overseas delivery. This promises reliable delivery to Europe in 3-5 business days and the rest of the world in 6-7 business days - I'm not sure why eBay suggests the delivery may be a month or more. It is tracked end-to-end with online confirmation and signature of delivery. Note this means your delivery address can't be a PO Box as a signature would not be possible. The prices quoted in the table are the direct Royal Mail costs up to 1kg and providing cover up to £250. Again, I make absolutely nothing on the postage. I have to make customs declarations on any overseas packages and I will list the value as the selling price of the album(s). For multiple purchases I will try to combine postage costs but this can sometimes take the weight from below 1kg to above which typically adds about £4 to the cost (but is still much cheaper than two separate packages). .

Some people prefer to use onward shipping companies based in the UK and I know I've had items forwarded to China and Eastern Europe from UK-based addresses. I'm not sure if there is a similar solution for USA and Canada.

If you have any questions please let me know and I'll try to answer them.

A  little more about me:

I'm also listing original pressings from the Robbie Williams, the Prodigy, Morrissey, Stereophonics; Joe Strummer, Radiohead etc etc, so please check my other listings if you are interested in mint or near mint original vinyl from this era.

These all comes from my personal record collection of over 1500 vinyl albums put together over 50 years. As I need to downsize I am starting to advertise around a 100 rarities starting with 90's vinyl, which I was still buying (but rarely playing!) while the world had moved to CDs. I have Jingles independent record shop in East Grinstead to thank for this as they continued to stock an albeit limited number of vinyl records and I felt obliged (as a vinyl aficionado) to keep buying them even though they were by artists I wouldn't normally consider (eg the Prodigy, Massive Attack etc). Un/fortunately this meant that a fair amount of these records never got played but just sat on my record shelf for 20 years.

I have been an audiophile for as long as I could afford it and moved up from a Thorens TD150 record deck, via Linn Sondek and Pink Triangle to my current SME10, which I've been running with an SMEV arm and Koetsu Rosewood cartridge for over 20 years. If that means nothing to you, suffice to say I take extreme care of my vinyl to the extent that I invested in a Loricraft PRCII professional record cleaner nearly 20 years ago and all of my vinyl immediately goes into protective plastic sleeves. Almost all of my rock/pop collection has been bought from new and I will always make this clear on the listing.