moody blue – facts and fallacies about elvis’ final album as a collector’s item

Es­ti­mated reading time is 10 min­utes.

AUGUST 16, 1977, was the day the Earth stood still: Elvis died. Very few fans were aware of his de­te­ri­o­rating health and we were un­pre­pared for our own re­sponse to his death. Fans were aware of Elvis in gen­eral: his latest album, MOODY BLUE, had been re­leased four weeks ear­lier and was selling better than usual. In the months after his death, his final album be­came one of his best selling al­bums ever.

Due it being his final album, MOODY BLUE holds a spe­cial place in the Elvis canon, de­spite it’s being a rel­a­tively undis­tin­guished album, even by Pres­ley’s flag­ging ef­forts of the time. As a mu­sical state­ment, it was a mediocre hodge­podge of studio tracks from the pre­vious year and live record­ings, one of which was three years old.

Given Pres­ley’s health at the time, I could argue that medi­oc­rity was ac­tu­ally Elvis rising to the oc­ca­sion and over­coming some high hurdles—namely his now-legendary self-medication skills. But this ar­ticle is not aimed at the mu­sical con­tent of the album, but in­stead ex­am­ines the many forms it took as a vinyl record in the 1970s and ’80s.

As the mar­ket­place was much more open to var­ious for­mats in 1977 than it is now when CDs rule, the album MOODY BLUE was is­sued in four media:

•  AFL1-2428: LP record
•  AFK1-2428: cas­sette tape
•  AFS1-2428: 8‑track tape
•  EPP1 2428‑C: reel-to-reel-tape

It was later re­leased as a com­pact disc (1988) and then as an ex­tended com­pact disc (2000). More re­cently, it was re­mas­tered and is­sued as a 180-gram LP (2013). For this ar­ticle, I ad­dress the LP al­bums is­sued in the United States from 1977 into the ’80s—and there are more vari­a­tions than you might imagine.

 

Elvis MoodyBlue LP AFL 600

The front cover for the MOODY BLUE was one of the more at­trac­tive covers on an Elvis album in the ’70s. That’s in the US, where RCA Victor con­sis­tently is­sued Presley plat­ters in mediocre sleeves. Other coun­tries often pack­aged Elvis in far more ap­pealing art­work, no­tably Japan.

First pressing: AFL on blue vinyl

In the late ’70s, col­ored vinyl was all the rage, as it had been in the early ’50s. So RCA had the first 250,000 copies of AFL1-2428 pressed on translu­cent blue vinyl at their In­di­anapolis plant. Why not? MOODY BLUE on blue vinyl cost the same as black vinyl and was a cute selling point. 2

These first press­ings had the fol­lowing in­for­ma­tion etched into the trail-off vinyl:

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM

Copies of this pressing can be found in sealed or opened shrinkwrap with one or two dif­ferent stickers af­fixed to the front:

•  One sticker reads The Blue Album
•  One sticker reads
Con­tains the hits Moody Blue and Way Down

For some reason—maybe the blue vinyl?—sales were brisker than pre­vious studio al­bums; within weeks of re­lease it was ob­vious that 250,000 copies weren’t enough and RCA switched the record to black vinyl for sub­se­quent pressings.

 

Final Album: label for AFL1-2428, the original MOODY BLUE album.

Copies of AFL1-2428 on black vinyl are rather rare records and can sell for an easy $200 in NM con­di­tion. Later press­ings with an AQL prefix on black vinyl are common used records.

Second pressing: AFL on black vinyl

In early Au­gust, after all the blue vinyl copies were shipped, In­di­anapolis began pressing the album on normal black vinyl. These records car­ried the same cat­alog number (AFL1-2428) with sim­ilar data etched into the trail-off vinyl:

Side 1: AFL1-2428‑A 1S A4? Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S A4F Mas­ter­fonics GA
M

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S LA5 Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S A1O Mas­ter­fonics GAM

On Au­gust 16, 1977, the un­think­able hap­pened: Elvis Presley died. RCA im­me­di­ately or­dered that MOODY BLUE be re­turned to blue vinyl. The number of copies of AFL1-2428 pressed on black vinyl is un­known. Given its scarcity among col­lec­tors, it could not have been a large press run. 3

 

Elvis MoodyBlue LP orig blue

There are mil­lions of copies of AFL1-2428 MOODY BLUE on lovely translu­cent blue vinyl. Opened copies in NM con­di­tion are worth $5–10. Nonethe­less, you will see people who be­lieve oth­er­wise asking HUGE prices for what they be­lieve to be a rare record at record shows, flea mar­kets, and on the Internet.

Third pressing: AFL on blue vinyl

RCA had to lease out other (smaller) pressing plants in the US and Canada to meet the un­re­lenting de­mand for Presley Product in the months fol­lowing his death. In­di­anapolis alone re­turned to blue vinyl and pressed mil­lions of more copies of AFL1-2428. 4

This should mean count­less dif­ferent stamper num­bers on one record from one plant, but I have only found a few num­bers (below):

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S A1V Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S A1Z Mas­ter­fonics GAM

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S A2H Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S A1F Mas­ter­fonics GAM

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S A3Q Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S A1P Mas­ter­fonics GAM

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S A2CC Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S A1N Mas­ter­fonics GAM

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-2S W Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-2S Mas­ter­fonics GAM

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM G A3
Side 2:
AFL1-2428-B-2S Mas­ter­fonics GAM D A2

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM A7
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-2S W Mas­ter­fonics GAM ?

Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-30 Mas­ter­fonics GAM
Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM 

There may be other numbers.

 

Final Album: label for AQL1-2428, the later MOODY BLUE album.

When RCA changed the MOODY BLUE al­bum’s cat­alog number from AFL1-2428 to AQL1-2428 in 1980, they switched over to black vinyl for all sub­se­quent press­ings of the record. These al­bums with black vinyl records are worth $5–10 each.

Fourth pressing: AQL on black vinyl

In 1980, RCA re­vamped its cat­alog and MOODY BLUE was given a new prefix and reis­sued as AQL1-2428. This and all sub­se­quent do­mestic press­ings of this record were on stan­dard black vinyl. The data in the trail-off vinyl:

Side 1: AQL1-2428‑A 32 # ~1~
Side 2: AQL1-2428‑B 32 # ~1~

Side 1: AQL1-2428‑A 32 A1A
Side 2: AQL1-2428‑B 32 A1A

Ques­tion: Are there any other trail-off num­bers? The lowest figure that I have seen from a re­li­able source for the sales of MOODY BLUE in the US is 4,000,000. The highest total I have seen is 14,000,000—although that is from a less de­pend­able source. Ei­ther way, there should be more stamper num­bers than the few I have listed above. 5

 

Elvis MoodyBlue LP slick1 500

This is the orig­inal de­sign for the LP cover; it was printed as a cover slick and then can­celed. The slicks were de­stroyed, but a few sur­vived and oc­ca­sion­ally turn up on the col­lec­tor’s market for sale. The most re­cent sale of one of these slicks was for a rea­son­ably modest $4,700.

Special vinyl pressings

During the pressing of MOODY BLUE, RCA’s plant at In­di­anapolis sur­passed 2,000,000,000 records man­u­fac­tured. A cel­e­bra­tion was held, in­cluding giving Elvis a plaque for the mere fact that one of his records was the two-billionth pressed. As part of the cel­e­bra­tion, RCA had sev­eral spe­cial press­ings of the album done in ex­tremely small runs. these were ap­par­ently given out to com­pany execs and other VIPs. 6

 

Final Album: photo of MOODY BLUE LP record on red vinyl.

These col­ored vinyl press­ings of AFL1-2428 are among the rarest and most valu­able Presley plat­ters of the 1970s. Due to the cur­rent in­sta­bility of the rare record mar­ket­place, a NM copy of any color record could sell for as little as $500 or as much as $2,000 at auction.

Colored vinyl

As part of the cel­e­bra­tion, a se­ries of lim­ited press­ings were done in solid colors:

•  green
• red
• white
•  yellow

There were also records pressed in two colors with a ‘splash’ effect:

•  purple-and-white
•  red-and-white
•  yellow-and-white
•  multi-color

Some of these were put in AFL1-2428 jackets, while others were simply slipped into plain white sleeves. 7

Picture disc

As part of the cel­e­bra­tion, a tiny number of pic­ture discs of MOODY BLUE were made with a photo of Colonel Parker dressed as Santa Claus! These were given by the Colonel to VIPs and are ab­surdly rare.

Record club

An avid col­lector searching the In­ternet could run across ref­er­ences for a spe­cial pressing of MOODY BLUE for the RCA Victor Record Club. These ref­er­ences often as­sign a cat­alog number to the record: 66602–4. The only list­ings that I found for a record with that cat­alog number was a German pressing of the album.

 

Final Album: front cover of the MOODY BLUE album with two stickers affixed to shrinkwrap.

This is a sealed copy of AFL1-2428 with both of the stickers af­fixed to the shrinkwrap. Most sealed copies with these stickers hold orig­inal blue vinyl records. No­tice that the folks at the store selling this copy paid no at­ten­tion to where they placed their pricing stickers.

The Avid Record Collector

Ac­cording to Pop­sike, there have been al­most 600 sales of MOODY BLUE in some form on eBay in the past ten years. The values below are for NM copies of cat­alog number AFL1-2428 and are es­ti­mates based on the few sales reg­is­tered on Pop­sike. As­signed values below are in US dol­lars and are approximations.

AFL1-2428  solid blue vinyl                                                              $          5
AFL1-2428  solid black vinyl                                                            $     250
AFL1-2428  solid green vinyl                                                           $  1,000
AFL1-2428  solid red vinyl                                                               $  1,000
AFL1-2428  solid yellow vinyl                                                          $  1,000
AFL1-2428  solid white vinyl                                                           $  1,000
AFL1-2428  purple splash vinyl                                                       $ 2,000
AFL1-2428  red splash vinyl                                                             $ 2,000
AFL1-2428  yellow splash vinyl                                                       $ 2,000
AFL1-2428  multi-color splash vinyl                                              $ 3,000

The pic­ture disc of AFL1-2428 with Colonel Parker as Santa Claus is so rare there have been no trans­ac­tions upon which to es­ti­mate a value. 8

In the days after Elvis died, grief-stricken em­ployees at the RCA pressing plant in In­di­anapolis spon­ta­neously cre­ated their own collectables—various col­ored vinyl and unique pic­ture discs were made of what­ever Elvis album they were printing, in­cluding MOODY BLUE. I have not in­cluded these sports in this article.

Mispressings and misprints

During the man­u­fac­turing of a record, mis­takes can happen. Some­times, the wrong label gets slapped onto one side of a record; this is usu­ally re­ferred to as a mis­printing. That is, a 45 or an LP can play the cor­rect music on both sides but have one cor­rect label and one in­cor­rect label.

Some­times, two parts are mixed up and the wrong music gets pressed onto one side of a record; this is usu­ally called a mis­pressing. That is, a 45 or an LP can have the cor­rect la­bels on both sides but play the cor­rect music on one side but play some other music—even an­other artist’s music—on the others side.

The value of such in­cor­rectly man­u­fac­tured records values wildly de­pending on the artist and the title. Both mis­printed and mis­pressed records carry sig­nif­i­cant value to a small por­tion of col­lec­tors, al­though it’s dif­fi­cult to as­sign any kind of value to them. Usu­ally, mis­press­ings are more de­sir­able than misprintings.

 

Elvis MoodyBlue cover photo 1000

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page was cropped from the photo above which was used on the cover of the MOODY BLUE album. It is a stun­ning photo and I have won­dered for more than forty years why RCA’s art de­part­ment de­cided that it needed a blue border in­stead of having it fill the en­tire front cover.

 

Elvis_ATOG_image

Post­scrip­tu­ally, a long-time Elvis fan who I have known for more than thirty years and who oc­ca­sion­ally makes the rounds of the In­ternet under the alias “Blane Win­ston” (as it is an alias, any other Blane Win­ston on the In­ternet or in real life is not this fake Blane Win­ston buddy of mine) wants it reg­is­tered that he dis­likes the MOODY BLUE cover de­sign: the blue border being too big and the photo of Elvis too small.

 


FOOT­NOTES:

1   I find it cu­rious that a record that sold enough copies to top the country charts at a time when country records were selling big, would have sold enough copies to at least put it near the Top 10 on the pop charts.

2   The 250,000 figure for the ini­tial run of blue records has been around a long time, but I have not seen it ver­i­fied by any­thing re­sem­bling an of­fi­cial RCA source.

3   I have read that the album had sold 300,000–400,000 units be­fore that fateful day in Au­gust. As that would have in­cluded LPs and tapes, the number of black vinyl records could be in the tens of thousands—a mi­nus­cule amount for a best selling album. 

4   Re­garding In­di­anapolis and AFL1-2428: “For five days after Elvis died, the In­di­anapolis plant pressed 250,000 copies of the MOODY BLUE album per day and then still man­aged to press a third of that figure for the fol­lowing four weeks. In total. it seems In­di­anapolis pressed a little over 4,000,000 copies of this album up to Feb­ruary 1978, to add to the 400,000 al­ready in print be­fore Elvis died.” (Elvis Ex­press Radio)

5   So many, many facts and fig­ures re­garding Elvis Pres­ley’s sales are un­known be­cause RCA “lost” years’ worth of pa­per­work from their ac­counting and/or sales de­part­ment. Fans and his­to­rians can only guess at some figures—including total world­wide sales of all Presley records, tapes, and com­pact discs.

6   Sup­pos­edly, each pressing was lim­ited to fifty (50) copies, but that is unconfirmed.

7   Some or all of the white vinyl press­ings have the cor­rect B‑side label for MOODY BLUE and the in­cor­rect A‑side label for LSP-1254(e) ELVIS PRESLEY.

8   Re­garding factory-sealed copies of AFL1-2428 with or without the stickers: the prices col­lec­tors pay are all over the place! In 2016, one sealed copy sold for $300, which is way too high! Since then, many sealed copies have sold in the $20–30 range. I found one well-known huck­ster of­fering two sealed copies: one is listed as “AFL‑1–2428, blue vinyl. SS” and is $100; the other is listed as “Moody Blue (the blue album) Mint un­opened AFL‑1–2428” and priced at a whop­ping $2,000!

 

Elvis Pres­ley’s Moody Blue album on blue vinyl is worth less than $10 but on white vinyl, it’s worth more than $1,000. Click To Tweet

 

 

34 thoughts on “moody blue – facts and fallacies about elvis’ final album as a collector’s item”

  1. You better check a home­less man was found dead under a over pass in San Dieago his freinds called him Jesse in­vis­st­gaters did a DA to find out who it was it came back as E lvis ARON Presley so what is the story the lab as­sis­tance names are Robert Brens­dale and Madi­line Hedgspeth a Davi Colon wrote the story they called him Jesse Doe

    Reply
  2. Some people try to get a lot of money out of the Cana­dien issue of Moody Blue be­cause it is also on black vinyl. The dif­fer­ence is it does NOT have a black label. It’s more of a lite copper/gold color. Discogs has some im­ages for com­par­ison. Be careful out there. I have heard that some people are printing fake la­bels and ac­tu­ally buying shrink wrap ma­chines to boost the value of an oth­er­wise vir­tu­ally worth­less platter. Stay woke!

    Reply
    • MARK

      Thanks for the advice—and it’s true that there are dealers who are un­scrupu­lous and will in­ten­tion­ally rip you off.

      There are also a lot of sellers who are simply ig­no­rant of the ins and outs of buying and selling old records. The In­ternet is FULL of them.

      So, all buyers should al­ways re­member the age-old warning: BUYER BEWARE!

      NEAL

      Reply
  3. Anyone who thinks MOODY BLUE is an av­erage album needs their head ex­am­ined. B’­side is ex­cel­lent. 2 of the A’­side are equal to that. That’s seven out of ten being ex­cel­lent. Even if you give the re­mainder a six the total is a re­spectable 88/100. I’d argue Lil Darlin get an 8 be­cause it rep­re­sents a solid en­ter­taining “fun” song which is its pur­pose. So a solid A- total imo.

    Reply
    • VERNON

      Thanks for the letter!

      One of the first let­ters that I re­ceived re­garding my opinion on Elvis came in 1986. The writer wanted to in­form me that I needed my head ex­am­ined if I thought that FROM ELVIS IN MEM­PHIS was a better album than G.I. BLUES.

      Of course, I went right out and had my head ex­am­ined. Need­less to say, the head doctor as­sured me that FROM ELVIS IN MEM­PHIS was, in fact, a much better album than G.I. BLUES.

      Un­for­tu­nately, I didn’t ask him what he thought of MOODY BLUE.

      NEAL

      Reply
    • 1. Nom­i­nated CMA album of the year.

      2. Won peo­ple’s Choice Award year’s fa­vorite album.

      3. Voted by country artists as Top 10 most in­flu­en­tial al­bums of all time.

      4. Yet Mediocre? 

      5. Btw, com­paring G.I. BLUES to any­thing after 1968 means you didn’t see the right head doctor and your di­ag­nosis was irrelevant....haha

      Reply
      • V

        Thanks for an­other comment!

        1. Be­cause he died and it sold a ba­jil­lion copies, many to people who had never bought an Elvis album before.

        2. Be­cause he died and it sold a ba­jil­lion copies, many to people who had never bought an Elvis album before.

        3. Please pro­vide the link for this—sounds like a fas­ci­nating article.

        4. It was just an­other Elvis ’70s album, this time pieced to­gether by Felton. It was a hel­lu­valot better than many of the al­bums that pre­ceded it in 1971–1976 but couldn’t hold a candle to THAT’S THE WAY IT IS or ELVIS COUNTRY.

        5. In 1960, G.I BLUES was the worst Elvis album that RCA had re­leased. By 1966, many of us wished he’d go back and cut a few more G.I. BLUES-like albums.

        Hang in there and keep those cards and let­ters and ha­ha’s coming!

        N

        Reply
    • CAROL

      Thanks for the com­ment and the ex­cel­lent question.

      If an album is sealed, you can never know what is in it until you break the seal, open it up, and take a look. This is true of every sealed album you may find. Even al­bums for which there was only one pressing are sus­pect be­cause the jacket may not hold the cor­rect record!

      • Re­garding AFL1-2428, on blue vinyl: Most of the with with blue records have a sticker that reads “THE BLUE ALBUM AFL1-2428–1” af­fixed to the shrinkwrap on the front cover of the jacket. Even with that sticker, it does not en­sure that a blue record is in the jacket as mis­takes were made by the people who worked at the record pressing plants. 

      • Re­garding AFL1-2428, on white vinyl: Copies of AFL1-2428–1 on any other col­ored vinyl (green, red, white, yellow, or any­thing other than blue and black) were man­u­fac­tured in mi­nus­cule amounts for in-house use among RCA em­ployees. These al­bums were prob­ably not shrinkwrapped.

      Hope this helps.

      NEAL

      PS: For more in­for­ma­tion on the MOODY BLUE album with lots of photos, click HERE. .

      Reply
  4. I have a black vinyl pressing of the Moody Blue LP, but my ma­trix num­bers are the same as the first blue vinyl press­ings and not what is listed above.

    The ma­trix num­bers are:

    Side 1: AFL1-2428-A1S
    Side 2: AFL1-2428-B1S

    Reply
    • MARK

      Thanks for the comment.

      Two things:

      1. I made slight ed­i­to­rial changes to your state­ments to make them align with the “style” of this blog.

      2. Are you saying that the ma­trix num­bers that are etched or stamped into the trail-off vinyl are these:

      Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM
      Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM

      That there are no “A” num­bers fol­lowing the “1S” on ei­ther side.

      Hoping to hear from you ...

      NEAL

      Reply
      • Hello, Neal!

        That is cor­rect — my black vinyl has:

        Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM
        Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM

        Ma­trix num­bers are etched with no number or let­ters fol­lowing “1S.”

        Thus the same stam­pers used from the first press­ings on blue vinyl were then used for the press­ings on black vinyl.

        Or vice versa...

        You tell me. :)

        Reply
          • Hey Neal —

            I went back to double check and there is some ad­di­tional number on trial out groove. Sorry — I didn’t no­tice them before. 

            Side 1: AFL1-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM A3 N
            Side 2: AFL1-2428-B-1S Mas­ter­fonics GAM A1 O

            Reply
            • M

              Not a problem! Given the still un­counted (and there­fore un­cer­ti­fied by the RIIAA) mil­lions of copies of AFL1-2428 pressed in In­di­anapolis, there should be a lengthy list of stamper num­bers for this record. Then there are all the copies pressed at other plants that RCA hired in the year fol­lowing Elvis’ death.

              Keep on keepin’ on!

              N

              Reply
  5. My brother was working at Millers Sound in Van­couver when I called him and told him Elvis had died. Then I asked him if he could do me a favor and buy the Lim­ited Edi­tion and num­bered Moody Blue album im­me­di­ately. It is un­opened and has the wrapper with the lim­ited edi­tion number on a sticker at­tached. He gave me the album with the con­di­tion if I sell it, he re­ceives half the proceeds.

    The number on the top right corner is AFL1-2428.

    The number on the round SPE­CIAL LIM­ITED EDI­TION sticker is No. 04953.

    The back of the album states it was man­u­fac­tured in Canada by RCA Limited-Record Di­vi­sion, 101 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario.

    Reply
    • Alas, the lim­ited edi­tion and num­bered Moody Blue album on blue vinyl that was man­u­fac­tured and sold in Canada sold a lot in Canada. It is not a rare record nor is it par­tic­u­larly valu­able. There are cur­rently more than two dozen copies for sale on Discogs with one copy graded NM‑M avail­able for $30 plus ship­ping. You can check them out here:

      https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/1776519?ev=rb

      Of course, your copy is still factory-sealed, which should in­crease the value significantly. 

      Hope this helped.

      Reply
  6. Hello!

    I have a copy of AFL1-2428 Moody Blue on blue vinyl. The ma­trix number etched into side A is “AFLI-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­fonics Gam.” Etched into side B is “AFLI-2428-B-2S Mas­ter­fonics Gam.” There are no other let­ters or numbers.

    Would this be a first pressing?

    The “2S” on side B is con­fusing me.

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • At the time that this album was man­u­fac­tured, RCA had most of their LPs pressed at their In­di­anapolis plant. The “S” number iden­ti­fies the stamper or part used. If a test pressing of a 1S/1S record proved faulty, then the flawed part would be set side and a re­place­ment part would be used.

      So, the first pressing man­u­fac­tured and sold to the public could be 1S/2S, 3S/1S, etc. As RCA did not keep the pa­per­work for all their re­leases over the past hun­dred years, finding “first press­ings” of rare records is a process of finding dif­ferent press­ings over time.

      Ide­ally, the ma­trix num­bers in the trail-off vinyl of first press­ings of RCA records from the ’70s should end with a “1S” on both sides. Copies of AFL1-2428 Moody Blue exist with a “1S” on both sides so most col­lec­tors would con­sider your copy a later pressing.

      Hope that helps.

      Reply
    • Ok thanks so it’s still a early pressing just not a first pressing do to the fact they had to use a 2s part on side B do to the 1s part failed on first attempt?

      Reply
      • Un­less the 1S part for side B failed in some manner, I do not know why there would be a 1S/1S pressing and then a 1S/2S pressing.

        In terms of col­lectibility, the blue vinyl Moody Blue LPs have little value as there are mil­lions of them.

        Reply
  7. I have two copies of the blue vinyl.

    1. The first one has one hype sticker, a dark blue “Con­tains the hits.”

    The stamper num­bers are:

    AFL1-2428 2S W
    AFL1-2428 2S I? W

    Both sides have what looks like a sig­na­ture but it is small and un­read­able to my eyes.

    It has a shiny black label.

    I’m guessing 3rd pressing?

    2. The other copy has two hype stickers—a dark blue “The Blue Album” and a much lighter blue “Con­tains the hits.”

    The stamper num­bers are:

    AFL1-2428-A-2S Mas­ter­phonics GAM
    AFL1-2428-B-1S Mas­ter­phonics GAM

    On both sides, GAM is be­neath Mas­ter­phonics and easy to read.

    It has a matt black label.

    Is this likely to be from the first run?

    Reply
    • My apolo­gies for the delay in re­sponding and for al­tering your comment.

      I had a copy that I bought in the first few weeks of its re­lease in 1977 with these stamper numbers:

      AFL1-2428-A-1S Mas­ter­phonics GAM
      AFL1-2428-B-1S Mas­ter­phonics GAM

      I as­sume that it’s a “first pressing” but I am not pos­i­tive as RCA’s num­bers are confusing.

      In the wake of Pres­ley’s death, not only did RCA have its In­di­anapolis plant pressing copies of the LP around the clock for sev­eral months, but they were also sup­posed to have leased other pressing plants in the US and Canada to man­u­fac­ture copies of the record. So, de­spite mil­lions of copies having been pressed (10 mil­lion? 15? More?), RCA has only sub­mitted the album to the RIAA for 2xPlatinum certification.

      The stamper num­bers can be found with three fig­ures after the “S” number. These are a com­bi­na­tion of letter/number/letter. Some press­ings have four fig­ures: letter/number/letter/letter!

      The stamper num­bers in the trail-off area on the blue vinyl press­ings of AFL1-2428, Moody Blue, may per­plex Elvis re­searchers for a looooong tiome ...

      Reply

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