The Mix

Whatever else has happened in 2020, it's been an interesting year in the world of my record collection. And this is a great way to end the year. Something that has been high on my want list for almost 6 years now - the elusive orange/pink mix vinyl copy of the Bold 7". I wanted a pink one for many years, and then as soon as I picked up one of those (in 2015), I immediately felt that something was missing.

For anyone who doesn't know what the score is, I thought I'd save my fingers a little work and just paste in the text from the Revelation Records pressing info:

The color vinyl was suppose to be maroon, to match the cover, but the pressing plant couldn't mix the color properly and came up with pink. After pressing a number of the pink they stopped and tried remixing the color, this time coming up with orange. To make life easier Jordan just had them do the 1000 on orange so the mix was created when changing from pink to orange without cleaning the presses. The actual invoice states 60 on pink and makes no mention of the mix, so how many of the pure pink versus how many of the orange pink mix exist is not known, but it is safe to say that that there are more than 10 of the mix as was originally believed. What is more, did the mix of colors count as orange or pink on the invoice? So are there 60 pure pink and a number of the mix color, or are there a even fewer pure pink and a large number of mixed?

The colour of the 'mix' copies does differ, and what I like about it is that nobody knows how many there are, or even which copies are actually mix copies and which are simply light orange (which I personally don't regard as being a mix, but who knows?). So part of the reason that it has taken me so long to grab one of these was because I wanted to wait for a copy that clearly contained a clear trace of pink, rather than just be a light orange. There's a definite pink splotch at the 9 o'clock position, which I think shows up more clearly when placed next to my pink copy of the same record:

For anyone wanting to own one of these, it's a total minefield. The photos of this record vary so much according to the light and background. A lot of the time someone thinks they have a mix when they really just have a regular orange copy. But the mix is going to cost at least double that of an orange copy. So buying 'blind' is a bit of a risk and could be an expensive mistake. The only real way to tell what's what is to have a mix copy and an orange side by side, but even then the light has to be good. I took a few photos of this one and every time at least one of the records came out looking not quite right. I tried to take a picture of my three copies, but none of them look quite like they do in real life. Still, it does show the contrasting colours.