Why are record sleeves, (when part of a record album sold in a bargain bin) nicked, cut, clipped, trimmed, or otherwise defaced?
Well any CD you see with a hole punched through the SKU number or a cut in the jewel case is a promo. Perhaps the “defaced” sleeve indicates the same thing?
Beyond just being a promo, it stops you from making a quick buck by returning it elsewhere. Notice you never ever pay full price for either CD or record.
You don’t mean just the sleeve, you mean the cover (cardboard) and the sleeve (paper). Cutting a corner from the cover, as World Eater speculated, was a common way to indicate that the album was slow-selling merchandise that the record company was unloading at a bargain price. Another method was to punch a hole in the corner of the sleeve.
The holes and the cut corners meant the record was a “cut out.”
All records are fully returnable by the stores, so if the record didn’t sell, it was sent back to the record company. Middlemen would come around to the record company and buy all their returned records at a discount price, then put them in stores also at a discount. The record company makes some money on the deal instead of having to dump the records.
To keep these records from being confused with records that the store could return for credit, a hole was punched or the corner cut off. Sometimes you could find cut-outs of the same albums the record store were selling for full price.
I’ve seen something similar now with cassettes and CDs, though they don’t always cut the corner. But I have seen a saw cut in the jewel case, which probably was the same thing.
I’ve got a copy of Introducing The BEATLES from Vee Jay Records that’s a corner cut, and I consider myself lucky to have gotten it. I used to scour the cut-out tables pretty thoroughly for interesting albums, they were the record store equivalent of remaindered books.
I miss browsing remaindered books. I found a lot of new authors in those tables.
Some bargain bin records have a notch cut out of the top edge or a hole drilled into the corner. CDs have been cut the same way. I had a bunch of old 45s that had holes drilled into them as well.
<aside>
Lynn, have you ever shopped Hamilton Books? They sell mostly remainders. Great place; I just bought another $150 worth.
</aside>
This one, by any chance? :eek: 
We also have a bunch of 45s with drilling in the center—all along, I thought it was a jukebox-related thing…