It All Comes Down To This

This is one of those 'Wow, I can't believe that record is mine now.' posts. And it's all thanks to Marcus over at Endless Quest. A few weeks ago he wrote me a message asking me if I'd seen the It All Comes Down To This test on eBay. I told him I hadn't, but that changed within seconds. The next six days were excruciating and I checked the eBay listing at least once an hour to see if it's still there and how high the price was already. Now I definitely know what people mean when they talk about the thrill of the hunt, haha.

For once I even told my wife that I was going after a real heavy hitter, because I knew that the price was going to be rather high. After all, test pressings of early Bane records almost never pop up and are thus almost impossible to find. So having a shot at this one was really exciting. Luckily, my wife is very understanding about my record collecting and even more so when it's about Bane records.

The final minutes of the auction were really gut wrenching and I was still hoping for a steal, because the price was still pretty moderate shortly before the end of the auction. It rose quite drastically in the last seconds, but the final price was still below my personal limit. And anyway, sometimes you just have to pull the trigger. It's only money after all. After I won the auction I contacted a few friends who also happen to collect Bane to see if I'd effectively ruined any friendships. Luckily, a bunch of them weren't even aware that this test had been up on eBay. Less competition and no friendships ruined, I'll take that.

Nobody really knows how many copies there are. However, I recall Marcus telling me once that Equal Vision Records used to make 8 test for the early releases and given the fact that there are also 8 tests for Bane's Give Blood LP, which was also released on Equal Vision, it's probably a good guess to say that there are 8 copies of this test as well.

I've only ever seen one copy up for sale and that went from Kyle Whitlow to Marcus. Comparing the picture of that copy with my copy, I noticed that the labels on my copy are still blank as in not filled out. Check out Marcus' copy to compare. I guess it's enough to fill out just one set of labels and then just go by the label's name and the catalogue number. Does that mean Marcus has #1/8? Knowing his luck with (Bane) records, probably yes. I also asked the seller where he had the test from in the first place. All he told me was that he'd bought a collection from someone and that test was part of the collection. Makes you wonder whose collection that was, but the seller wouldn't tell me more.

This is really one of the absolute gems of my collection and I can't thank Marcus enough for tipping me off.

EURO 53. 'Blank' A side label.

For an occasion like this I had to pull out the other copies as well and go for the group shot.