Beatles Help LP Sealed SMAS 2386 Amazing

$

234

Capitol SMAS 2386 Beatles HELP!  Sealed. The rarest copy you'll ever see!

Ok, I had purchased this many years ago from a person who had worked for some sort of distribution arm of EMI/Capitol. This is the one. The vent/breath holes are present(pictured) and it has never been opened. I already had a mint copy on hand but I was a complete nut for anything early or first press & sealed rare Beatles back then and had to have this. After paying a fair amount I walked away with this as a vault time capsule piece. He had two of these and I bought one. He had pointed out it's rarity as an error copy and at the time I really didn't think much of it back then. In conversations over the years with various Beatle collectors one had heard of this "eyebrow" copy and said they had never seen one. Well, here you go. I can't begin to tell you how difficult it is for me to part with the records I am listing over the next few weeks. Bills must be paid and I certainly never thought I'd be posting this one. I will say that this will qualify as the rarest copy of HELP probably offered anywhere unless you have a master pressing disc!! Somehow the wrong pre press art for the front & back cover made it to press. I doubt if there were more than a box of these that made it to retailers back in the day. The error is obviously a pre press touch up that was to fix Paul's eyebrow before it went to print. That's how they did it in the film days before Photoshop! I had taken this to a graphic artist that works in the music business to verify and under magnification he also confirmed this is a legitimate pre press error. The creative dept. at Capitol had circled the "fix" that needed to be made to Pauls brow and then it should have been corrected.  Compare this to your copy and the close up pictured. You'll see it right away.  Also, negligible but worth mentioning, is that the "New Improved" by FULL DIMENSIONAL STEREO seems to have missed the red in the 4 color printing process as it is an almost unreadable bright Yellow. This is a mistake on the original printing press plate that was obviously corrected. This is legit and I'd bet you've never seen it. I know you haven't. I'm not calling it Mint as is has a slight corner bump and a slight rub on the spine(pictured). Let's call it Mint-. The closest I could find on eBay's completed auctions was under auction # 280441335115 and it was a nice clean correct copy. This is one for the Beatles collector who thought they had it all. This was one of my "Hey, Check this out" pieces. Email with any questions and bid to own as this will continue to climb in value over the years. You can see the original sleeve peeking out as well. I am offering with no reserve because, well, how do you put a value on this? What do you compare it to? It will need to be insured obviously and I will only mail it Priority at the very least. Thanks for looking and feel free to check out other auctions I will be posting this week. Some cool Beatles stuff but not like this. GOOD LUCK and let's hope for a stellar 2010!