Unit Pride Gold Mystery

So I picked up a long standing want recently, which I don't feel like I have done for a while. I'm not sure how long this one has been on my want list. At least ten years probably, which is no doubt hilarious to some idiots. I've seen this one go on eBay lot of times and every time I think I am watching one that is going to go cheap, the price leaps up at the end. Not this time though. For some reason the gods were smiling and I picked this one up for only $16, which I consider to be a bargain.

Unit Pride 'Then And Now' 7" on gold vinyl. This is the second pressing of this 7"... well, kind of. It has slightly different songs to the first pressing too, which I suppose kinda makes it a different record, although it's not really. There were 1000 copies on gold vinyl which were all hand numbered on the dust sleeve.

As you can see, I got a mid range number. 640 of 1000.

Also, I'm guessing that this was sold in a store at some point as someone seems to have seen fit to write the record name on the flip side of the dust sleeve, which is slightly annoying if you are a perfectionist nerd.

This thing also comes with a mid size lyric sheet, and my copy is no different.

So there you go. I finally picked this thing up after ten years of half wanting it but never quite bidding enough. Cool eh?

Well, to make the story just a little better, it turns out that the copy I did get has some quirky feature to it. There's something about it that makes it stand out from the other 999 copies. Or rather, from 996 of the other copies...

So when I took it out of the sleeve I noticed that this one has photos printed on the inside of the sleeve. Here's a pic of the sleeve unfolded:

And here's the other side of the unfolded sleeve, which also features the same photos but without any of the text:

Now, I probably would have just assumed that all copies came with a print on the inner sleeve if it hadn't been for the fact that this copy is numbered in the corner, as shown here:

As you can see, it says '#1/4 Covers' in the top corner.

So naturally, I now wonder what this is all about. I mean, is this really one of only four copies that had the photos also printed on the inside of the sleeve? That's what the number seems to suggest. But you have to wonder why this was done. I can see the point of the label wanting to do a test print of the photos that were to be used for the cover before actually making the real covers, as I have done this myself. But why do that on the back on a proper sleeve after the sleeves were made? Surely any test prints would have been done before the covers were made, not on the back of one of the finished sleeves. That makes no sense at all. Or maybe the test print was done on a piece of blank paper, but then for some reason they printed a real cover on the back of the test print? Seems plausible I guess. But if that was the case then why put record number 640 into one of the special sleeves? I mean, surely if you only had 4 test print sleeves then you'd put numbers 1-4 in those sleeves, wouldn't you?

Unfortunately this is all just speculation and I don't think it likely that I (or anyone else for that matter) will ever know what the hell is going on here. But regardless, it's cool that I got some weird anomaly copy for so cheap after having it on my want list for so long.

If anyone knows anything about this or has seen one before, please get in touch.