I bought this record from Parrot Records on King Street in '84 or '85. Then… well, I guess I needed the £3.49, or at least I felt I needed it more than the two brief and relatively unremarkable tracks that were exclusive to this release at the time. So I took the record back under some pretense (maybe I recorded the two tracks onto cassette first, but if I did that cassette is long lost) and exchanged it for another.
Many times I've rued that decision. Not so much for those two tracks (The Toy has since been included on their History boxed set, and Piano Music is on Piano Music), but for the artwork, and the live versions of Numbers 1-4 and Salty Bean Fumble that remain unique to this release… and for general anal fanboy completeness.
Years, decades passed. It was listening to the Orchestra's Union Cafe album that led me to set up a 'saved search' on eBay for all things PCO-related. And that search found a copy of the Mini Album remarkably quickly. It cost me £17 (60% of which was international shipping from Italy), but I figured that was penance for my stupidity 24 years earlier and took it on the chin.
Meanwhile, the saved search stayed saved, and last September another copy of the Mini Album became available, this time with a very low reserve price. I made a low bid, and won a second copy, this time paying only £2.76 (99.6% of which was shipping from Horsham, Sussex). Either it's not as valuable as I thought or — this is what I'm hoping — the other collectors were just asleep that week.
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