Roots Archives Forum

I was just wondering about this question for a good while, but never pushed it any further.

How many original pressings of a release or pre-released copies of vinyl records, either

JA press ??

English Press ??

Canadian press ??

others ??

I'm curious to know, thank you for your expert opinions.

For JA 7" singles, Ive heard many times the number of 300 for the first press, folowed by an immediate repressing in the next weeks if it sell well.
But many were really more limited, especially those chune auto-produced on a one-away label... Some are said to have 50 press, some others 100... Some only came as pre-release...

But hope to learn more too...

Guidance

and probably during the late 70's vinyl was scarce in limited quantites, so that would account for cheap pressings on hissy vinyl too.

damn 50/100 copies...didn't expect that some records was issued in so limited number! I'm realy curious too to know the real issue of some tunes...surely big label had big quantities...

There are many very small production runs in reggae and not many very large runs. I would imagine, though I don't know, that those with less than 5,000 copies far outnumber those with more than that amount of pressings.

I'm sure this must be true as so many of the records are so very very hard to find!

leggo rocker wrote:There are many very small production runs in reggae and not many very large runs. I would imagine, though I don't know, that those with less than 5,000 copies far outnumber those with more than that amount of pressings.

For Island or Virgin pressing, this is far more I guess but for the labels with only few refs, I think you're right Leggo.

An idea would be to compare the frequency of appearence on ebay with pressings for which you know the number and extrapolate, it could give an idea.
For valuable records, we could check popsike. As an example, the album "Réalités" by Camera Silens (french punk) issued in 1984 with 5000 ex appears 11 times on popsike and appears very often on ebay.fr.

It would be interesting to know the exact pressed quantity of some discs...
This one would interet me particularly

http://www.popsike.com/php/detaildata.p ... 0116314779

The only way to know this for sure is seeing the receipt from the pressing plant, which I've seen on a couple occasions.

I have this junior dan 7''...so i'm one of the 50/100 lucky owner of it?!?! I remember that junior dan was writing on that forum , maybe he know how many 7'' was issued!

You have to consider that many records should be lost or broke...so if they was 50 in the beginning...now they are much less!! In my oppinion most of the jamaican records was issued in more than 50 copies but many owner don't want to sell them , that's why you don't see them around!!

Rootkalist is right. Many many records are lost and broken and many more stashed away by the owners.

A guy I once worked with admitted to me that he had used all his old ska, rocksteady and bluebeat singles as target practice for his air rifle. Way back in the day when they were next to worthless of course. He was almost in tears as I showed him the present values of these singles.