OK – a total classic here for sale. 

This is referred to as the Butcher Cover in Second State – and it is a fine one indeed. A mono recording of Yesterday and Today, this one plays absolutely brilliantly – I am listening to it now, as I am typing this description. It is warm and bright, and there are simply no bad songs on here, to me – it just rocks so well! There are some light pops in between the songs sometimes (though I have not cleaned it in the Discwasher yet) but not at all during them – no skips, and no noise that is in the way here…a nice thing for a record this old now.

The reason they have different states of the Butcher Cover, is because when originally released, the cover had the boys in meat-covered smocks with doll parts dangling everywhere – not exactly all Suzy Armchair-friendly or anything. So the label did not want to reprint all these records, but they instead pasted a sticker with a different picture on it and kept them selling – no more meaty bits, no more arms and legs ripped out. 

But through the years, the fans discovered what happened, and they wanted the original one. Sometimes they were even successful in peeling off the sticker, revealing the original under there. It has created 3 states in the marketplace now for sale:

1. First State: the original cover, no sticker
2. Second State: a sticker placed over the original cover, not peeled off
3. Third State: a successfully peeled-off sticker

There are some that are like half-peels and such, because getting the sticker off is not the easiest thing to do. The original covers are worth a ton though, so people tried for sure – steaming, and doing whatever they could.

Mine here, is a clean second state – though there is some age and slight damage to it, the sticker has never been removed or messed with. And like I said, the wax plays wonderfully – I am happy to spin this one whenever I can.

One way to tell for sure that the butcher cover is under the sticker, is to look for Ringo’s “V” in the white field to the right of them, under the text about 2 inches. Ringo’s lapel from the original picture comes thru the sticker, and you can see it on the front cover here – a faint, but visible black triangle.

Note that with this and all the images here, I loaded large ones, so you can click to see it bigger and see it in very close detail – I did not doctor them in any way.

If you look at the front cover across the top, it is clear the sticker is on the original cover:

the spine on this one is pretty well done for – though the top edge is in nice shape. 

The  bottom edge is pretty solid, except for a split toward the edge, about 1 1/2 inches:

Here’s the rest of the pictures…if you want a sound clip, let me know.