Crimpshrine 7" 1st Press

Well here I am - still catching up on posts from the last few weeks. Clearly I have missed my 'one post a day target'. But I can still just about catch up by the end of the year if I get a move on...

Regular readers of this may know/remember that about 4 years ago I discovered 120 or so 7"s in my collection that had damaged sleeves. Pretty much all are records that have photocopied (or cheaply printed) sleeves. The problem is to do with the ink, which over time somehow goes "sticky" and starts to look wet. I am convinced that the cause of this problem is heat. Here's a picture of my Crimpshrine 'Sleep, What's That?' 1st pressing, which suffered badly:

Notice how the black ink reflects the light, because it has taken on a wet appearance. Notice also the red, stamped number, which was present on the first pressings of the first five Lookout! releases.

Well, a few weeks ago I got around to replacing this one via a cheap buy on eBay. But unfortunately, when the record arrived, I discovered that the sleeve suffered from the same problem as mine... only far worse. The ink had stuck so badly that it was impossible to remove the sleeve from the PVC cover.

As you can see, this is in very poor shape:

I emailed the seller, he refunded me immediately and told me there was no need to send the record back. Good service for sure, but it still left me without a copy of this record in good condition. So I went back to eBay again, and got lucky. I found a listing for another first pressing copy, but this was one better, because it had (apparently) originally been owned by a member of the band... and for some reason, it came with a second sleeve printed in an alternate colour. I bid and won and, fortunately, when the record arrived it turned out to be in perfect condition.

The alternate colour sleeve is pretty crap in all honesty. Basically it's just a photocopy of the regular sleeve:

This record comes with a little booklet containing lyrics and other stuff. And this copy also comes with a second copy of that too, also printed on exciting white paper!

So now I have one copy of this record in great shape, one in not so good shape that I have owned for about 16 years, and one trapped in a PVC cover in very poor shape.

No idea what I am going to do with the excess two copies. Anyone want a less than mint Crimpshrine 7" first press?