Free To Think, Free To Be

There are certain records on my want list that I think I'll never own for various reason. Be it that they are too expensive or simply so rare that the odds of me owning them are really, really small. This record here is a prime example for that. There are only 10 copies of the so-called 'Buffalo press' of Bane's Free To Think Free To Be 7". The funny thing is that no one of the people involved in making this record actually remembers making it. It seems that the 'Buffalo press' were the remaining ten copies of the 2nd press of the Free To Think Free To Be 7". Tre from Deathwish most likely marked them for a show in Buffalo, hence the name. The records of this 'pressing' don't have consecutive numbers. My copy is #169 (= Buffalo press #6), the other known one is #267 (= Buffalo press #7).
The only copy I knew of was Brian Murphy's. He had it listed on his HYE list and in the pressing info he provides on howsyouredge.com. That's how I came to know about this version in the first place. I've been collecting Bane for a couple of years now, but prior to this one I had never even seen one or heard of one for sale. Not even Marcus Andrews has one of these and that says a lot since he has the most complete Bane collection I know of, including insanely hard to come by test pressings of the early releases. So naturally I assumed I'd never get one of these…
In the end it took me less than 30 minutes to get it. I found this ebay listing of a lot consisting of three Bane 7"s. Nothing too fancy at first glance, but when I read the description I saw that the seller had written something about writing on the dust sleeve of the Free To Think Free To Be 7". Something about Buffalo and limited to 10. There hadn't been any bids made yet, most likely because I stumbled over the auction minutes after it had been put up. I didn't hesitate and contacted the seller to see if he was down for accepting offers. He was and after writing back and forth for roughly half an hour we had come to an agreement and a few minutes later I paid to seal the deal. I didn't even have time to try to verify if this was legit. When I received the record, I sent a picture to Brian Murphy and he told me this one looked exactly like his copy. Sometimes you get to be lucky that way. I was really happy that I managed to pick up the Give Blood test pressing a few weeks ago, but this record really makes my year.