Some People Will Collect Anything

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Old school, love it! What are your more rarer/valuable(?) CDs?

As I mentioned before, typically the most valuable CD's are the first pressings made in Japan or West Germany (where the first CD plants were located). All of the early CD's sold in the US were from one of these plants. The first album to be released on CD was Billy Joel's 52nd Street, that reached the market alongside Sony's CD player CDP-101 on October 1, 1982 in Japan. Early the following year on March 2, 1983 CD players and discs (16 titles from CBS Records) were released in the United States and other markets.

The very earliest discs were either "black face" or "red face" disks. As the names imply, the entire front of the disc was either black or red and the words were where the color wasn't printed. Shortly after that many of the first "target" discs began to hit the market. Target discs get their name from the cross hairs painted on the rim every 90 degrees. I've attached a picture of some examples of the target discs. These were made from around 1982-1985. There are often different colors of the same disc available, so some people try to collect as many varieties as possible of their favorite groups.

Early on the record companies weren't sure what to do with CDs. For vinyl records they use the RIAA curve. It is an equalization filter applied to vinyl records and then corrected in record player amplifiers in such a way that the listener is never aware that any change has occurred. On the record itself, songs are engraved so that low frequencies are cut in volume while high frequencies are boosted. Should they use the equalization they used for records on CDs?

It was decided by most companies that since the CD was supposed to be nearly perfect from 20Hz-20KHz, that they would just go straight from the master tapes and put that onto the CD without any changes. That has made the early CDs the most desirable version to many collectors because you're getting a copy of the master tape (the way the band wanted the record to sound).