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The Beatles
Best Of The Beatles CDs

Compil. JP 1989 on Odeon label
Rock (Classic Rock)

In 1987, to commemorate the initial release of the Beatles' CDs in their country, the Japanese arm of EMI/Odeon decided to create a one-off single disc "greatest hits" CD for the group, to be distributed to the usual incredibly small list of industry figures and radio programmers. As anyone that collects Japanese CDs can tell you, sometimes even getting commercial copies of a release can be tough, and finding promotional discs (particularly for hugely successful bands) can be well-nigh impossible. Such is the case with genuine copies of this disc. The edition was numbered, and a log was kept of the recipients of each specific disc, in order to discourage re-distribution. This counterfeit disc was produced within two years of the issuance of the genuine disc-- this reference copy, for example, was obtained in early 1989. As the front cover is a black and white line drawing of the group with added text, it really isn't much help in identifying a counterfeit disc. And for all intents and purposes, the printing on the face of the counterfeit disc looks identical to the original. Sonically, the CD seems fine, but the counterfeit was most likely cloned from an original disc. The only notable manufacturing difference on the CD is that the data ring coding is not comprised of solid, machine-stamped numbers, as a true EMI disc from the Tokyo plant should be-- instead, the data ring information is written using a thicker "dot matrix" style font.. For comparison purposes, an image of a genuine backing card is included in the "Image" section. Prospective purchasers of this promo should note the small (but tell-tale) differences in fonts and design of the backing cards that are much more obvious when one is able to compare them side by side... it cannot be overstated that this is a very believable copy of the original. If you didn't have an one to compare with, you'd probably never know... But hopefully, now you do.

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The Beatles , *1960 GB album by

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