the avid record collector’s price guide to A Touch Of Gold albums

Es­ti­mated reading time is 17 min­utes.

HARD UP FOR NEW RE­LEASES while their cash cow was in the Army, in 1959–1960, RCA Victor is­sued three vol­umes of EP al­bums ti­tled A TOUCH OF GOLD. I had al­ways liked that title and had sub­se­quently used it as the title for my second Elvis Presley price guide. And now it is re­cy­cled yet again as the title of this blog for Elvis fans and collectors.

The TOUCH OF GOLD al­bums were com­pi­la­tions con­jured without ap­parent rhyme, as the song se­lec­tions make little sense. Each record had two le­git­i­mate A‑sides that were million-sellers, one flip-side of a million-seller (that was it­self a Top 40 hit), and one side that didn’t make any na­tional survey any­where or sell any­where near a million.

As the first two were def­i­nitely gold and the third ar­guably gold, I sup­pose that RCA could claim that the fourth was touched by that gold!

There may not have been rhyme, but there was a reason: the three al­bums were re­leased to keep ‘new’ Presley Product on the shelves. The TOUCH OF GOLD se­ries were pot­boilers of a sort and while they were not big selling items then, they have been fan faves and col­lec­tables for decades. ¹

Below find a discog­raphy and price guide for those three records. 

 

EPA-5088 A Touch Of Gold, Volume 1

This record shipped on April 21, 1959, and fol­lowed the re­lease of FOR LP FANS ONLY in Feb­ruary and (Now And Then There’s) A Fool Such As I / I Need Your Love Tonight in March. Ac­cording to Ernst Jor­gensen, this first volume sold “a re­spectable 130,000 copies.” ²

Jackets with two dif­ferent cover de­signs can be found with first pressing records and both were ap­par­ently is­sued in the first half of 1959. The idea that RCA Victor paid for two sep­a­rate de­signs is rather odd, as that could lead to con­fu­sion among buyers. So the two de­signs are pre­sented below as si­mul­ta­neous first printings.

 

First printing jacket, or the 3‑line title cover. The title on the front cover is on three cen­tered lines as “A / Touch / Gold” with “of” set off to the left. Presley stands against a medium blue back­drop, and the print on the album title and the logo box and song ti­tles on the ma­roon border is in a darker blue. This is ar­guably the most vi­su­ally at­trac­tive of the cover vari­a­tions and could rea­son­ably be tagged ‘the blue cover.’

•  The back cover has “© by Radio Cor­po­ra­tion of America, 1959” in the lower right corner.

•  This is def­i­nitely a first printing and may, in fact, be the sole first printing.

Vari­a­tions in the im­ages that can be found on­line (like the two above) may be ei­ther fluc­tu­a­tions in the ac­tual printing of the cover slicks in 1959 or less than per­fect pho­to­graphic and com­puter re­pro­duc­tion on the In­ternet fifty years later. This is a topic for fur­ther investigation.

 

First printing jacket, or the 4‑line title cover. The title on the front cover is on four cen­tered lines: “A / Touch / of / Gold.” Presley stands against a neu­tral back­drop with a hint of blue, and the print on the album title and the logo box and song ti­tles on the ma­roon border is in a darker blue. 

•  The back cover has “© by Radio Cor­po­ra­tion of America, 1959” in the lower right corner.

•  This may be a first printing is­sued si­mul­ta­ne­ously with the 3‑line printing above.

Vari­a­tions in the im­ages that can be found on­line (like the two above) may be ei­ther fluc­tu­a­tions in the ac­tual printing of the cover slicks in 1959 or less than per­fect pho­to­graphic and com­puter re­pro­duc­tion on the In­ternet fifty years later. This is a topic for fur­ther investigation.

Later print­ings of this jacket used through the ’60s have “© 1959, RCA, New York, N.Y.” in the lower right corner of the back cover. There is no dif­fer­ence in the value as­signed to any of the jackets above at this time.

 

EPA-5101 A Touch Of Gold, Volume 2

This record shipped on April 21, 1959, fol­lowing the re­lease of A Big Hunk O’ Love / My Wish Came True in June and A DATE WITH ELVIS in July. Ernst states that it sold, “close to 100,000 copies,” or ap­prox­i­mately 20% fewer than the first volume.

•  First printing jackets have “© by Radio Cor­po­ra­tion of America, 1959” in the bottom right corner of the back cover.

•  Later printing jackets have “© 1959, RCA, New York, N.Y.” on the bottom of the back cover. 

There is no dif­fer­ence in the value as­signed to these jackets at this time.

 

EPA-5141 A Touch Of Gold, Volume 3

This record shipped on Feb­ruary 23, 1960, weeks prior to the re­lease of Elvis’ first post-Army single Stuck On You / Fame And For­tune in March and ELVIS IS BACK in April. Ac­cording to Ernst, it sold “little more than 50,000 copies,” or ap­prox­i­mately 60% fewer than the first volume.

•  First printing jackets have “© by Radio Cor­po­ra­tion of America, 1959” in the bottom right corner of the back cover.

There were no fur­ther print­ings of this jacket. (Ap­par­ently, enough jackets were printed in 1959 or ’60 to last fora al­most ten years.)

 

RCA Victor EPA-992, ELVIS VOLUME 1, be­came the first extended-play EP album to sell more than a mil­lion copies and it reached that number in do­mestic sales alone. It achieved these num­bers due to Love Me be­coming a huge Top 10 hit as the fea­tured track of an EP. Had it been re­leased as a single, it might have ri­valed Hound Dog / Don’t B Cruel as Elvis’ biggest hit and seller of the decade.

Elvis EPs were consistently big sellers

Aa a medium, a hit EP rarely matched the suc­cess of a hit 45 or LP, and that in­cludes most of the best-selling artists of the ’50s. The Presley EPs of 1956–57 were an ex­cep­tion: they were con­sis­tently big sellers, nine of them selling in ex­cess of 500,000 copies in the US alone. Even rel­a­tively poor sellers topped 250,000!

So when Ernst claimed that the first TOUCH OF GOLD’s sales of half of that number were “re­spectable,” he must have been using a stan­dard other than those of Pres­ley’s ear­lier EPs. Sales de­clined even more with the suc­ceeding vol­umes: the second barely reached six fig­ures, while the third volume sold con­sid­er­ably less than half that of the first.

 

None of the records have the title “A Touch Of Gold” on the la­bels. I could make the as­sump­tion that when the records were pressed, RCA Victor had not set­tled on a title for them.

 

As these records re­mained in print for ten years, sales in the years 1961–68 ap­par­ently re­flected ini­tial sales, and this is born out by the number of copies avail­able on the col­lec­tors market.

As I write this, 360 copies of EPA-5088 have sold on eBay in the past ten years, fol­lowed by 250 copies of EPA-5101, and 200 copies of EPA-5141. So, there are con­sid­er­ably fewer copies of the second and third num­bers and they sell for con­sid­er­ably more money.

Oddly, none of the records have the title “A Touch Of Gold” on the la­bels: they list the song ti­tles and artist credit only. I could make the as­sump­tion that when the records were pressed, nei­ther RCA Victor nor the Colonel had set­tled on a title for them, but I won’t.

 

Copies of extended-play al­bums from the 1950s and early’60s can be found still sealed in a lo0se baggy-like wrapper. As shrinkwrap­ping did not be­come the in­dustry norm until 1964, these wraps usu­ally in­di­cate that the jacket holds an early pressing of the record. (See “Still Sealed EPs” below.)

The records and labels

RCA Victor’s ‘pop­ular’ or ‘pop’ music records in the 1950s and ’60s were known for two things: the high-finish, glossy black paper used for their la­bels, and the pres­ence of the com­pany mascot—a dog named Nipper lis­tening to an old record player—on those la­bels. With few ex­cep­tions, every Elvis record re­leased in the US be­tween 1955 and 1968 were is­sued with that fa­miliar label de­sign. ³

For ease in col­lecting, first press­ings are gen­er­ally dif­fer­en­ti­ated from later by the label de­sign. During the ’50s, RCA had three pri­mary pressing planets: in Rock­away, New Jersey, in Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­fornia, and in In­di­anapolis, Indiana.

Pres­ley’s records were pressed in each of these lo­ca­tions. Also, as the de­mand for Elvis records was often be­yond the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the three plants to meet, RCA hired other com­pa­ny’s plants and in­de­pen­dent plants.

As each of these plants used local printers to make their la­bels, there are many pos­sible vari­a­tions on the RCA Vic­tor’s basic, pre­ferred look. But that is more than I will be dealing with below. For this ar­ticle, each of the three al­bums has four dis­tinct press­ings as de­ter­mined by label styles:

 

First pressing records from early 1959 (EPA-5088 and 5101) have glossy black la­bels with “RCA Victor” at the top and Nipper above the spindle hole. This label vari­a­tion is often re­ferred to as dog on top or Nipper on top.

•  The tiny print in the perimeter at the bottom of the label be­gins with “Trade Marks” on the left (8 o’clock) and in­cludes “Camden, N.J.” on the right (5 o’clock). 

•  This first pressing of each of the three vol­umes of this EP is the most common pressing, as ini­tial sales in 1959 would have been the biggest. The first press­ings are also the most sought after, as each and every proper record col­lec­tion fo­cuses on first pressings.

Vari­a­tions for this label exist: RCA Victor’s three pressing plants used three dif­ferent com­pa­nies to print their la­bels. Each plant’s records can usu­ally be iden­ti­fied by the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of each plant’s printer. This can be also be done by looking at the iden­ti­fying code of each plant that is etched into the trail-off vinyl (or ‘dead wax’ among older, aging, de­crepit col­lec­tors like my­self) of each record.

Most of the dif­fer­ences are in the choice of type-face and the sizing of that type. There are a few bigger dif­fer­ences: for ex­ample, copies can be found with and without RCA Vic­tor’s trade­mark “New Or­tho­phonic High Fi­delity” motto printed on the right side of the label.

So far, no vari­ance in value has been es­tab­lished for these differences.

 

First pressing records from early 1959 (EPA-5088 and 5101) have glossy ma­roon la­bels with “RCA Victor” at the top and Nipper above the spindle hole. This label vari­a­tion is often re­ferred to as dog on top or Nipper on top.

•  The tiny print in the perimeter at the bottom of the label be­gins with “Trade Marks” on the left (8 o’clock) and in­cludes “Camden, N.J.” on the right (5 o’clock). ⁴

Vari­a­tions for this label exist: RCA Victor’s three pressing plants used three dif­ferent com­pa­nies to print their la­bels. Each plant’s records can usu­ally be iden­ti­fied by the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of each plant’s printer. This can be also be done by looking at the iden­ti­fying code of each plant that is etched into the trail-off vinyl (or ‘dead wax’ among older, aging, de­crepit col­lec­tors like my­self) of each record.

Most of the dif­fer­ences are in the choice of type-face and the sizing of that type. There are a few bigger dif­fer­ences: for ex­ample, copies can be found with and without RCA Vic­tor’s trade­mark “New Or­tho­phonic High Fi­delity” motto printed on the right side of the label.

So far, no vari­ance in value has been es­tab­lished for these differences.

Vari­a­tions in the im­ages that can be found on­line (like the two above) may be ei­ther fluc­tu­a­tions in the ac­tual printing of the la­bels in 1959 or less than per­fect pho­to­graphic and com­puter re­pro­duc­tion on the In­ternet fifty years later. This is a topic for fur­ther investigation.

 

Second pressing records from late 1959 have glossy black la­bels with “RCA Victor” at the top and Nipper above the spindle hole. This label vari­a­tion is often re­ferred to as dog on top or Nipper on top.

•  But the tiny print in the perimeter at the bottom of the label was changed in late 1959: it be­gins with “TMK(s)” on the left (8 o’clock) and does not have the Camden, N.J. ad­dress on the right.

This would be a second pressing for EPA-5088 and 5101 but a first pressing for EPA-5141.

Vari­a­tions for this label exist: RCA Victor’s three pressing plants used three dif­ferent com­pa­nies to print their la­bels. Each plant’s records can usu­ally be iden­ti­fied by the pe­cu­liar­i­ties of each plant’s printer. This can be also be done by looking at the iden­ti­fying code of each plant that is etched into the trail-off vinyl (or ‘dead wax’ among older, aging, de­crepit col­lec­tors like my­self) of each record.

Most of the dif­fer­ences are in the choice of type-face and the sizing of that type. There are a few bigger dif­fer­ences: for ex­ample, copies can be found with and without RCA Vic­tor’s trade­mark “New Or­tho­phonic High Fi­delity” motto printed on the right side of the label.

So far, no vari­ance in value has been es­tab­lished for these differences.

 

Second pressing records from late 1959 have glossy ma­roon la­bels with “RCA Victor” at the top and Nipper above the spindle hole. This label vari­a­tion is often re­ferred to as dog on top or Nipper on top.

•  But the tiny print in the perimeter at the bottom of the label was changed in late 1959: it be­gins with “TMK(s)” on the left (8 o’clock) and does not have the Camden, N.J. ad­dress on the right.

Does this label vari­a­tion exist?

 

Third pressing records from 1965 have glossy black la­bels with “RCA Victor” on the right side of the spindle hole at 3 o’­clock, and Nipper on the left at 9 o’­clock. This label vari­a­tion is often re­ferred to as dog on side or Nipper on side.

Label vari­a­tions for these EPs may not exist, as all press­ings of the records for the three ti­tles ap­pear to have been done solely at the In­di­anapolis plant.

 

Later pressing records from 1968 have or­ange la­bels with “RCA” on the left side of the spindle hole and “Victor” on the right. Those of us buying RCA records in 1968–1969 missed the faithful form of Nipper on the rather ugly or­ange labels.

Label vari­a­tions for these EPs may not exist, as all press­ings of the records for the three ti­tles ap­pear to have been done solely at the In­di­anapolis plant.

 

EP sales for every artist plummeted

By the time of the British In­va­sion of 1964, sales of EPs for every artist plum­meted in the US. Ex­cepting the Vee-Jay Bea­tles EP (which was priced as a single at 98¢), EPs were not selling well at all. The Bea­tles and the Beach Boys each had EPs is­sued by Capitol make the carts in 1964, but sales were a frac­tion of that of a single for those two groups.

By 1968, the LP be­came the medium of choice for rock music and sales of EPs were so min­imal as to be in­con­se­quen­tial. Con­se­quently, copies of most Elvis EPs with the black Nipper-on-side la­bels (1965–68) and or­ange la­bels (1968–69) are rather rare records indeed.

In fact, the or­ange records are so scarce that they may have been pressing plant er­rors! They are far rarer than the other press­ings above and com­mand the highest prices from collectors.

 

I ti­tled my second Elvis book (A Touch Of Gold – The Elvis Presley Record & Mem­o­ra­bilia Price Guide) after these lovely EPs.

The Avid Record Collectors Price Guide

The values below are ex­pressed in United States dol­lars (USD). They are a com­bi­na­tion of my in­ter­pre­ta­tion of sales on eBay and else­where on the In­ternet as re­ported on Pop­sike and Col­lec­tors Frenzy—and un­der­standing what the sales fig­ures ac­tu­ally mean is not as easy as it may sound. This data is com­bined with forty years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the hobby and busi­ness of buying and selling used and col­lec­table records.

Due to a va­riety of factors—new people coming on eBay daily with little knowl­edge of what they are selling, and the con­tin­uing bad rep that many sellers have for not un­der­standing grading—prices paid for these records on eBay over a 24 month pe­riod can vary dramatically.

 

EPA-5088 A Touch Of Gold, Volume 1

Black label, Nipper on top, “Trade Mark”:      $    75 — 125
Black label, Nipper on top, “TMK”:                   $ 100 — 150
Ma­roon label, Nipper on top, “Trade Mark”:  $ 100 — 150
Ma­roon label, Nipper on top, “TMK”:              $ 150 — 200
Black label, Nipper on the side:                         $    75 — 150
Or­ange label:                                                          $ 100 — 200

 

EPA-5101 A Touch Of Gold, Volume 2

Black label, Nipper on top, “Trade Mark”:      $  100 — 150
Black label, Nipper on top, “TMK”:                  $   125 — 175
Ma­roon label, Nipper on top, “Trade Mark”:  $ 150 — 200
Ma­roon label, Nipper on top, “TMK”:              $ 150 — 200
Black label, Nipper on the side:                         $    75 — 150
Or­ange label:                                                          $ 100 — 200

 

EPA-5141 A Touch Of Gold, Volume 3

Black label, Nipper on top, “TMK”:                  $  150 — 200
Ma­roon label, Nipper on top, “TMK”:              $ 200 — 300
Black label, Nipper on the side:                         $     75 — 150
Or­ange label:                                                          $ 200 — 300

The values above are an ap­prox­i­ma­tion of what an es­tab­lished dealer with a sound rep­u­ta­tion for grading and hon­esty should ex­pect to sell these items for in NM con­di­tion. Should you choose to sell your copies of these records any­where, you should not ex­pect to re­alize these numbers.

In my pre­vious books, I used a rule-of-thumb scale for as­cer­taining values of records and sleeves in less than nearly mint con­di­tion. An item graded VG+ was valued at 40% of the NM value, while a copy graded VG copy was 20% of the NM value.

That is a 2.5/1 and a 5/1 ratio, re­spec­tively, and that was the largest such spread be­tween NM and the lesser grades that had ap­peared in a price guide. I am in­clined to say that the vast amounts of records for sale on the In­ternet has made the spread even greater.

As my books pre­dicted decades ago, the number of re­ally de­sir­able items in re­ally de­sir­able con­di­tion (NM or better) is far fewer than most col­lec­tors believe.

 

There are more records out there than ex­pected, but fewer of them in NM con­di­tion than ex­pected, hence col­lec­tors have adopted the ral­lying cry, “Con­di­tion! Con­di­tion! Condition!”

 

Con­versely, the number of copies in VG-VG+ con­di­tion is con­sid­er­ably greater than anyone be­lieved at the time. That is, there are more copies of each title in the hands of col­lec­tors and dealers than we ex­pected, but fewer of them are in NM con­di­tion than we expected.

More and more col­lec­tors have adopted the ral­lying cry, Con­di­tion! Con­di­tion! Condition!

As an ex­ample, let’s take the last record listed above: an or­ange label pressing of the third volume (EPA-5141). With a $200–300 value as­signed to a NM copy, I would sug­gest a VG+ value of $80–120, and a VG value of $40–60.

If you check Pop­sike’s listing, I be­lieve that you will find the ma­jority of the copies of this record that are sold on eBay are less than NM and sell in the areas I just suggested.

So, should you own the records above in less than NM con­di­tion and want to eval­uate their value, start at ap­prox­i­mately 40–50% of the as­signed NM value above and then work your way down from there.

Please keep in mind when re­viewing these values that the In­ternet is not the best place to sell Elvis records. True rar­i­ties often sell for much more via word-of-mouth or through an es­tab­lished record dealer’s set-sale list.

And those dealers who spe­cialize in Presley product get prices that you would not believe.

The list­ings above are for US press­ings; the first two vol­umes were is­sued else­where, no­tably Eng­land, but they are not in­cluded in this article.

 

Still sealed EPs

In 1959, some Amer­ican record com­pa­nies began ship­ping EPs and LPs to whole­salers in a loose, baggie-like wrapper that was heat-sealed on one side to pro­tect the jacket and the record within. This wrap­ping was not shrunk with heat so that it clung to the album. The process of what is called the shrink-wrapping al­bums in thin plastic sleeves was not widely adopted by the Amer­ican record in­dustry until 1963–64.

Some RCA wrap­pers had a gold box printed on the front that ad­ver­tised the album as “Gold Stan­dard Se­ries — Only $1.29” (above top). Others had a more generic $1.29 or $1.49 printed on the front (above middle and bottom). Need­less to say, sealed copies are very dif­fi­cult to find fifty years later and can sell for con­sid­er­ably more than NM copies.

 

Copies of EPA-5088 (the first volume) can be found with a bonus Elvis fan iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card in­side the wrapper (above). It is 2 x 3 inches with a black and white photo from King Creole that be­gins, “I am a loyal Elvis fan.” There is a line at the bottom for a signature.

This card has been coun­ter­feited many times. A value of $50–100 is rea­son­able for a NM card; it would be higher if not for the re­pro­duc­tions. As to how one how can tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween a real one and a fake: orig­i­nals have rounded cor­ners, whereas most of the fakes have an­gled cor­ners. And most re­pro­duc­tions will ap­pear to be new be­cause they are new!

 

POST­SCRIP­TU­ALLY, you can see your name in print: make a cor­rec­tion or an ad­di­tion to this or any other ar­ticle on my Elvis – A Touch Of Gold site and I will praise thee unto the Heavens (and thank you in print as an ad­dendum to the article).

For more on the Avid Record Col­lector, click here.

And spe­cial thanks to Frank Daniels for his con­tri­bu­tions to this ar­ticle! His input helped in dif­fer­en­ti­ating first and second printing jackets, and first and second pressing records above.

 

___________

 

FOOT­NOTES:

^{1   One reason for this is that the image of Elvis is at­trac­tive and the de­sign by RCA’s graphics de­part­ment is so damn pleasing. This is not some­thing that I would say about many—if not most—of the Presley pic­tures sleeves and album jackets is­sued by RCA Victor in the US. I could pick a dozen re­leases from the ’50s and present an ar­gu­ment that the Colonel was con­sciously playing down Pres­ley’s looks! And some of RCA’s pack­aging is just plain am­a­teurish. It would only get worse in the fol­lowing decades . . .}

^{2   Sales fig­ures are taken from those that Ernst Jor­gensen sup­plied for the book Elvis: Day-by-Day that was co-authored by Peter Gu­ral­nick (Bal­lan­tine Pub­lishing, 1999).}

^{3   This logo was of a dog named Nipper with his head damn near stuck in the horn of an old gramo­phone, sup­pos­edly lis­tening to his master’s voice. This image was taken from a painting by Eng­lish artist Francis Bar­raud, and was orig­i­nally used by an­other record com­pany, the Gramo­phone Com­pany of Eng­land, later His Master’s Voice (HMV). It was also used in the US by the Victor Talking Ma­chine Com­pany, later a part of RCA Victor. Also, RCA’s records had other colors of pa­pers de­pending on the genre: blue, gray, green, ma­roon, and red la­bels were also used.}

^{4   It was long as­sumed by most col­lec­tors that the ma­roon label EPs were a man­u­fac­turing error where the pressing plant used the wrong la­bels or simply ran out of the black ones. This was be­cause RCA’s clas­sical al­bums had red/maroon la­bels. such may not be the case: RCA may have in­tended ma­roon la­bels for the Gold Stan­dard Se­ries EPs. The case is not closed.}

 

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