Identifying a Warsaw first pressing by printing anomalies:

After a lot of research comparing early and original pressings both physically and from photos sent to us by collectors we believe it is possible to tell an original pressing via some ‘print hickeys’ on the front cover. Please note: we can't guarantee this information is 100% accurate as we are researching it some 40 years after the event.

Hickeys are a common problem in offset printing caused by particles sticking to the blanket or plate that transfers the image to the printed page, usually showing as a dot with a ring around. They may affect all, or part, of a print run as the person operating the printing press would would likely clean any specs they noticed from the roller.

1.  The original black vinyl pressing has some distinctive hickeys in the top left corner of the pulsar design. As far as we know the only other pressing that has these features is the clear vinyl reissue.

We have confidence in this because the son of one of the original bootleggers has a first pressing copy with these marks.


2. Some copies of the first pressing also have a distinctive small circle half way down the design on the right hand side. Some first pressing copies have it elsewhere, others don't have it at all. We suspect this was caused by dust or something that moved about during the print run. This does not appear on any of the represses.

We have confidence in this because a friend of the other first pressing bootlegger got a copy and his had the "o" in this position.

        

All copies have various tiny white white specs in random positions.

Finally it's worth noting that, as these are errors that may have been spotted and corrected during the printing process, there may be sleeves without these features.