Gardiner Beethoven Cycle with Upside-down Label!

Cafe Society
1

Hey-

Let me first say I was not sure wether to post in the General Questions area or in here. If it gets moved, I totally understand why. ok on to the yarn-

Sometime in the mid 90s I purchased the complete symphonies of Beethoven conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (wonderful, and superhuman, I have to add), on the Archiv label. Well, on my copy, on the actual outer cardboard box, the embossed “Archiv” seal is upside down! I have travelled all over the world and peruse record stores as a general obsession; I have not seen any other copies with the upside down mark like mine.

SO- my question- is this documented somewhere, how many were printed like this, and (you knew it) is it worth more due to this quirk? Also- with respect to the value, the box is pretty beat up, unfortunately, but most definitely in one piece. No tears or anything, just a lot of …wear, like years of sliding it over table and shelves, etc…

2

General speaking, in record collecting, unlike stamp collecting, manufacturing errors are not valuable (except for those that result in rare music being released by mistake). For example, once in a while an LP turns up with the correct music on one side, and something completely different on the other, due to a mix-up at the pressing plant. The lucky finder of a mispressed half-Rolling Stones/half-101 Strings LP may think he’s found a valuable rarity, but an expert will tell him there’s just no market for it. So I strongly doubt that there would be much collector’s value in your Beethoven set. Lots of musical value, though–I like those Gardiner recordings a lot. I have them as individual CDs, having bought them as they came out, before they weer collected into a box set.