ELTON JOHN Greatest Hits Vol 1 & 2 NM 1976 MCA R231711 CLUB EDITION

$

40

Vinyl:  NM  TOP COPY!  Appears to have never been played!!   Has a few sleeve marks that don't affect sound quality.  Super high gloss vinyl.  Superb Fidelity.  MCA Labels are Clean and Bright. This is the Club Edition of the Original 1976 MCA Release! R231711.   This is Elton's enormously popular First and Second Greatest Hits Collection!  This should be anyone's first flight into the Master Pop of Elton John & Bernie Taupin and is always a welcome spin for the faithful.   all music gives it 5 stars!!! 
See Review Below!
In the Dead Wax:  Full Dead wax details cheerfully given upon request. 
Cover: VG++ (see photos)  Nice high gloss on cover.  Front and back of cover artwork and text are rich, clear and bright, with some ring wear on the back cover. Seams, corners and spine are solid and clean, with minimal wear.  No splits.  No writing.  Spine print is crystal clear.
Goldmine Standards.   I play grade every record that I sell on eBay as I have found you can't rate a record accurately by just visually inspecting it.  I wipe the dust off of every cover with clean, unscented baby wipes.  I professionally clean the vinyl.  (I also operate a Vinyl Record Cleaning business for your dusty/dirty records--if interested, send me a message).
U.S. Shipping:  $5.49 Media Mail.  50 cents additional shipping per additional album, when the shipment is combined.   If you wish to take advantage of my COMBINED SHIPPING deal, simply select your records by clicking on "ADD TO CART" on the main listing page.  Do this for all of your selections and then go to your cart to checkout.  Your combined shipping discount will be computed automatically.  Free domestic shipping if you spend $100 or more!  
All records are packaged securely with the vinyl outside the jacket (to avoid seam split in transit). The vinyl and jacket are sandwiched between two cardboard stiffeners and shipped in a custom cardboard record mailer box. 
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Why buy a first or early pressing and not a re-issue or a ‘re-mastered’ vinyl album? 
First and early pressings are pressed from the first generation lacquers and stampers. They usually sound vastly superior to later issues/re-issues (which, in recent times, are often pressed from whatever 'best' tapes or digital sources are currently available) - many so-called 'audiophile' new 180g pressings are cut from hi-res digital sources…essentially an expensive CD pressed on vinyl.  Why  experience the worse elements of both formats?  These are just High Maintenance CDs, with mid-ranges so cloaked with a veil as to sound smeared.  They are nearly always compressed with murky transients and a general lifelessness in the overall sound.  There are exceptions where re-masters/re-presses outshine the original issues, but they are exceptions and not the norm. 

First or early pressings nearly always have more immediacy, presence and dynamics. The sound staging is wider.  Subtle instrument nuances are better placed with more spacious textures. Balances are firmer in the bottom end with a far-tighter bass. Upper-mid ranges shine without harshness, and the overall depth is more immersive.  Inner details are  clearer.  

On first and early pressings, the music tends to sound more ‘alive’ and vibrant.  The physics of sound energy is hard to clarify and write about from a listening perspective, but the best we can describe it is to say that you can 'hear' what the mixing and mastering engineers wanted you to hear when they first recorded the music.   

AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rarely has a greatest-hits collection been as effective as Elton John's first compilation of Greatest Hits. Released at the end of 1974, after Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Caribou had effectively established him as a superstar, Greatest Hits is exactly what it says it is -- it features every one of his Top Ten singles ("Your Song," "Rocket Man," "Honky Cat," "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Bennie and the Jets," "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"), plus the number 12 "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" and radio and concert favorite "Border Song." Despite the exclusion of a couple of lesser hits from this era, most notably "Levon" and "Tiny Dancer," Greatest Hits is a nearly flawless collection, offering a perfect introduction to Elton John and providing casual fans with almost all the hits they need.  

Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 rounds up the handful of singles that weren't included on Elton John's first Greatest Hits collection ("Levon," "Tiny Dancer") and adds the highlights from Caribou, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and Rock of the Westies ("The Bitch Is Back," "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," "Island Girl," "Grow Some Funk of Your Own," "I Feel Like a Bullet [In the Gun of Robert Ford]"), plus two non-LP hit singles ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Philadelphia Freedom") and John's version of "Pinball Wizard," taken from the soundtrack to Tommy. In short, it's an excellent continuation of the first collection, and taken together, they function as an ideal singles retrospective of the most successful singles artist of the early '70s.