Beatles Their Biggest Hits Tollie EP SET ORIGINAL 1975 FIRST PRESS RARE w/PROMO

$

1,200

Beatles Their Biggest Hits Tollie EP SET ORIGINAL 1975 FIRST PRESS RARE! INCLUDES PROMO COPY!

Includes: 1 each of the ORIGINAL 1975 stock copy and 1 each of the ORIGINAL 1975 promo

These are the ORIGINAL 1975 FIRST PRESSINGS, NOT the POOR quality reproductions that were made in the 1980s (promo copies were never booted).

Only 100 copies were made of the stock issue, and only 10 were released back in 1975.

Only 10 copies were made of the promo issue, and only a few were released back in 1975.

ALL OF THE RELEASED COPIES WERE INTENTIONALLY ROUGHED UP, MADE TO LOOK WORN. NO COPIES WERE RELEASED IN GREATER THAN VG to VG+ CONDITION. ALL HAD SCUFFS OR MARKS ON THE COVER AND THE DISCS.

THE COPIES IN THIS AUCTION ARE BOTH NEAR MINT, THE FIRST TIME ANY HAVE EVER BEEN SOLD IN HIGH GRADE CONDITION!!!

Trivia: One of the partners involved in the Tollie EP project went on to form the Tobe Milo record label in 1976.

More details:
The infamous "Tollie EP" - This bootleg EP was custom made by two northwest USA collectors and was released in 1975. Issued with a hard picture sleeve, this was the first fake Beatles record that was designed and passed off as being a newly discovered and previously unknown official release.

The four-track disc included the cuts that Tollie Records (a division of Vee Jay) had released on two separate singles. There were only three legitimate Beatles EPs released in the U.S. in the 1960s, two from Capitol and the VJ EP. So the idea was comically born to "discover the previously unknown Tollie EP".

The cover was painstakingly designed and printed to match the jacket style of the VJ EP, right down to the thickness of the cardboard - measured with a micrometer. The covers, printed in Seattle, were hand-assembled and then later "roughed up" so that no mint copies would be circulated and to add a little "aging". The label color was picked from dozens of shades to exactly match a 1960s Tollie 45 release, with the text and logo matching as well. The artwork was then sent to California for the disc pressing.

The discs were then slowly "discovered" and sold, causing initial excitement in the collecting world. Every top collector at the time believed them to be real. The bootleggers knew that at some point it would eventually be detected as a fake, but wanted to see how long they could fool everyone. Just a few months later it was indeed found to be bogus by several leading Beatles experts. A few minor imperfections in the design of the disc and label gave it away. The main clue was that close inspection of the cover revealed "ring wear" - exposing the fact that the photo was copied from an original Capitol picture sleeve. Since several of the records had been sold for the then-large sum of $150-$200, a full refund was offered by the bootleggers to those who had purchased the EP. Amazingly, not one single person returned their EP, even though upset from being fooled into paying so much for a bootleg. Only a couple known copies have been seen for sale since they came out in 1975!

MM Ticket To Ryde LTD Since 1974