The Beatles - Yesterday and Today/Stereo/Butcher Cover/2nd state/EX cover

$

700

The Mad Platter presents:

An extremely hard to come by collection recently purchased, and listed for your buying pleasure.

Check my other listings for more rarities.

All respectable offers will be reviewed and considered.

The Beatles - Yesterday and Today/2nd State Butcher Cover/and the harder to find Stereo!

Stereo ST 2553, #5 on the back cover which was a stereo cover that came from the pressing plant in Los Angeles, California.

1966 - 1st US Pressing on Capitol Records with the pasted over trunk cover.

This needs no introduction, nice stereo second states are becoming ultra scarce, and command big money.

As a result, it has become an item on many collectors grail list.

Once again, this is not a re-pressing, its the first edition. Sadly there is no record, but who buys this for the music anyway?

Vinyl: No record

Cover: VG+ to EX, check the pictures. It's a great looking copy for being 52 years old! The previous owner peeled 2 small spots, not sure why?, you can clearly see the black v on the right side. A little yellowish discoloration on the bottom slightly peeled area. Looks like the top cover had a split at some point, and the previous owner glued it shut. They did a pretty good job, check the pictures. Other than a few corner bumps, it's a very nice representation.

Top collectors copy here.

This will be shipped in a quality static free inner sleeve & brand new outer sleeve.

I ship media mail, but will send as you like, at your expense.  This shipping will be on the house.

Additional insurance is also your responsibility. 

Communicate with me and I will do as you like.

USA buyers only, too many issues shipping overseas.

Here's some details I found on it’s release from rarerecords website:

Arguably the most controversial album cover of all time, The Beatles "Butcher Cover" is the infamous original album cover for the 1966 US LP record titled "Yesterday and Today" that was initially authorized and manufactured for release but quickly banned by Capitol records prior to commercial distribution in 1966 due to immediate public outcry and negative response to the outrageous cover art.

The grotesque album artwork featured The Beatles dressed in butcher smocks surrounded by raw meat and decapitated baby doll parts. The butcher scene was deemed far too gruesome and bizarre for general consumption. And this was decades before the term "politically correct" would ever come into existence. Even today, it is extremely difficult to comprehend how even The Beatles were able to get the green light for such controversial album cover art. This very question has fueled countless theories and speculations concerning the reasons and ideas behind the creation and production of the cover. These theories range from a carefully planned publicity stunt, to a political statement on the Vietnam war, to the band's answer to the American record company's policy of shorting the buying public by selling lp's with a few less songs than the British counterparts in order to be able to compile an extra lp every year or so.

Rather than take a financial bath by destroying hundreds of thousands of copies of the albums in question and starting from scratch by manufacturing completely new cardboard jackets and corresponding cover slicks, Capitol records devised a clever scheme to take the existing jackets and cover just the front of the jacket with the more familiar and socially acceptable cover slick now commonly referred to as the "trunk cover". It is called the trunk cover due to the fact that the Beatles are pictured surrounding a steamer trunk which was used as a spur of the moment photographic prop. Initially, Capitol destroyed a great quantity of the original first state butcher covers prior to implementing the plan to cover the remaining offending jackets with the now more familiar trunk cover as an economical solution to a seriously grim situation. First state butcher covers that have been pasted over by the trunk cover at the Capitol factory are known in the collecting community as "Second State Butcher Covers".

The value of the copies of Yesterday and Today with a Butcher cover lies with the cover itself; the records within them are relatively common. For those interested in owning a Butcher cover, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is that Capitol Records produced the better part of a million copies of that album in 1966. The bad news is that many of those covers were either destroyed or altered, and the surviving examples can often sell for a breathtaking amount of money on the collector’s market.

At the time of the release of Yesterday and Today, record companies in America were still pressing records in both stereo and mono, as stereo records were playable only on stereo equipment and most buyers only had mono record players. Because of this, approximately 80%-90% of the finished covers were in mono, with the remainder in stereo.

While Second State Butcher/Pasted over covers were common in 1966, they’re significantly harder to find a half a century later. Over time, many of these albums have ended up in the trash, as albums often do, and quite a few of them were likely owned and eventually discarded by people who had no idea that they owned a version of the Butcher cover.

Even among surviving examples of Butcher covers, Second State Butcher covers have become more rare over time, as many people have peeled them to reveal the original Butcher cover underneath, often with varying degrees of success. Because of peeling and general attrition, Second State Butcher covers are somewhat scarce today. As with First State issues, Second State Butcher covers are significantly more common in mono than they are in stereo.

In the original Butcher cover photo, Ringo Starr was wearing a black turtleneck sweater underneath his white butcher smock and the part of the turtleneck that appears in that photo is triangular in shape. On Second State issues, the part of the trunk cover slick that is directly above that black triangular area is all white.

All versions of the Butcher cover are collectible, and collectors are interested in owning all three versions in the best possible condition. All three are relatively uncommon, and the First State versions are quite rare.

Second State versions, however, are becoming increasingly rare, as many thousands of them have been peeled over the years. As these records were sold when new as Second State issues, they have value to collectors “as-is”, that is, in their original unpeeled state.

If your Second State version is in pristine condition, be it still sealed or perhaps still in the original shrink wrap, or even in mint condition, you should probably leave it alone. It’s worth the most it’s ever going to be worth in its current condition.

Keep in mind that Second State Butcher covers are collectible in their own right, as that’s the way the album was sold when it was first released to the public. Every time someone peels one, there’s one less Second State copy left in the world. As time goes on, they’re becoming increasingly rare.