The Daily Swarm

Vintage Vinyl News:

Record dealer John Tefteller may have stumbled across one of the rarest Beatles albums in existence. He was contacted by the widow of a Capitol Records executive about taking a look at the man’s record collection. Amongst a lot of easy listening and jazz was a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band but there were none of the Beatles’ faces on the cover. They had been replaced with pictures of the record company’s executives and given out to people at the label. To make it even better, the album was still sealed.

It is estimated that only about one hundred of the albums were made and, according to Beatles expert Stan Panenka, only three or four are actually known to exist with the last turning up about ten years ago. The rarity makes it next to impossible to establish a value for the album.

MOG:

“At first look, I thought, ‘Okay, this is a standard Sgt. Pepper LP, but — hey, wait a minute, it’s still sealed. It’s not opened,’” relates Tefteller, owner of John Tefteller’s World’s Rarest Records. “And then as I look at it closely, I go, ‘Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. There’s no Beatles on here. Who are all these people?’ ”

Those people worked for Capitol Records, and Tefteller was about to find out this particular Sgt. Pepper album was no ordinary Beatles record. In fact, it may be one of the rarest Fab Four LPs of all time, and at this writing, he is negotiating its sale to noted Beatles collector Stan “The Beatleman” Panenka.

So he made an appointment to see the records. The woman did say there was a bit of rock ’n’ roll in the collection, and “… as I’m going through the LPs, she says something about, ‘Well, there’s a Sgt. Pepper album in there,’” says Tefteller. “I’m like, yeah, okay. And I just figured, normal Sgt. Pepper album, no big deal, whatever. It’s cute to see one, but they’re not particularly rare unless they’re like factory-sealed in mono, or something. Or factory-sealed original stereo. They could have some value. Just in general I figured all these LPs look like they’re open and used. This is going to be just a standard Sgt. Pepper LP.”

But that was not the case. When Tefteller asked about the record, she replied, “This was one that was given to my husband. The other people on this cover are all Capitol Records executives.”