David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World EX+ UNOFFICIAL 1975? VINYL LP Mercury SR-61325

EX+ (Excellent Plus) Vinyl / VG- (Very Good Minus) Cover. Vinyl appears only lightly played - only defect is a small scuff or scratch patch on Track 2 of Side A - all else is clean and glossy - slight wrinkling on one label side. Cover shows some severe moisture damage at top front and mouth edge - no mold -  lightly dinged and worn corners and edges. Original inner paper sleeve has yellowed and has a seam split starting.

Barcode and Other Identifiers (matrix #s are hand-scratched):

• Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, etched, var. 2): SR - 61325 - A - M2
• Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, etched, var. 2): SR - 61325 - B - M1 PR

• Notes

  Counterfeit of the original US Mercury edition of the album, see  David Bowie – The Man Who Sold The World 
• For visually similar counterfeit with similar matrices, please see David Bowie ‎– The Man Who Sold The World
  Not dated but it is fair to speculate pressed sometime post-1972 when Bowie was becoming more well known.
  The country is also unknown but judging by the sleeve construction probably USA. There are said to be many more bootlegs of this album than real copies as it sold very few on release.
  The bootleg is a very faithful reproduction of the original and appears almost exactly identical except for three prominent differences:
  1- the matrix # is hand-scratched, NOT machine stamped
  2- about 2 seconds of music is missing from All The Madmen, there is an edit that removes the words ’they’re all as sane as me’ from the line ’For I’m quite content they’re all as sane as me’ from the end of the first chorus (although you can hear the start of the word "they’re" if you listen closely). Someone who had not heard the album before would probably not notice this edit. This is not a skip, it is quite smoothly done and sounds like a tape edit. It suggests there was some imperfection with the source material which was deliberately edited out. Therefore this also suggests the audio is taken from an archival copy of the vinyl and dubbed to tape, rather than a master tape transfer.
  Apart from this omission the music is of a professional sounding quality and artwork appears identical
  3 - The rear cover speech bubble "Oh by jingo" on an actual Mercury cover is very close to the lyrics above it (less than a lyric line space below the lyric "So softly a supergod cries (second times dies)" ), whereas on counterfeits the speech bubble is almost three line spaces below.
  
  Track A2 is titled ’All The Madmen’ on back cover and ’All The Mad Men’ on label side A.