- This topic has 47 replies, 10,364 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
hey! I need some help here… I just bought the Siamese Dream \"Collector’s Edition\" woodbox on eBay, and I have some very good reasons to believe it is fake, specially if I compare it to the pictures posted on the SPFreads catalogue: 1) The plaque is of a bronze color instead of silver (with a slightly different text style), and 2) The CD and booklet are made in US (mirror image CD & foldout booklet) instead of Holland (red disc and 1 page per song). I complained to the seller, and got what seems to be a very informed response:
\"Every one of that boxset was made by a company called Smashing Records (part of the Griffin Music label) based in Glendale Heights in Illinois USA. The first 100 had the UK import in them that was imported by Feedback Inc, the largest CD importer in the US back when it was made circa 1995. The remaining 900 had the different plaque and the US release CD without the signatures. (Most of the boxes were exported by Smashing to Europe & Japan).\"
Did anyone know this part of the story? Is it true??? I have read all the posts I’ve found regarding this box, but never heard this part of the history. help!
farewell and goodnight… MS
-
-
The status of this release isn’t very clear. Is it official? If not, how \"fake\" is it? The cds and booklets are real.
Anyway, as far as I know there isn’t much reason to think that the copy on spfreaks.com would be more official than another copy that looks a bit different.The seller mentions a cd with signatures. Any idea what that is supposed to mean?
-
SPFC only says this:
\"The Siamese Dream Collector’s Edition is a wooden box with brass hinges that contains an autographed CD copy of the album and the 1st pressing booklet. The autographs are merely stamped reproductions. There are also reports of the box commonly being sold without the CD or booklets.\"
We have our info here:
http://www.spfreaks.com/default.aspx?pa … &item=1697
\"Shaped wooden box set (aka Siamese Dream Collectors Edition) with metal hinges limited to only 1000 copies which contains the UK HUT CD album housed in a recess with individually numbered silver metal embossed plate at the side. The 20 page booklet is housed in a similar recess in the lid completing this box set. Though the CD itself and the booklet are official and genuine, the wooden box is not an official Virgin (US) or HUT (UK) release. The year of production is uncertain, but because it contains the UK CD and booklet, it is most probably manufactured in the UK. To end all confusion: there are no real or stamped autographs of Pumpkins bandmembers on it. There are rumours that this box was heavily bootlegged around 1999 – 2004.\"
So, I’m very curious about the autographs myself also, together with Cool As Ice Cream. I have never seen a copy WITH autographs, so I really wonder if it exists. Let’s see who brings in the next info. What is provided here is already pretty neat. Who knows more?
(PS I never bought it myself, and probably never will, despite its coolness… It’s a bootleg, that was even bootlegged itself, that’s how I feel about it.)
-
I agree. I did my share of research before buying it, and finally decided to buy it mainly for curiosity (and I have to admit that it is actually kind of cool because of its size and weight, even though I always thought it looked ugly on the pictures). The status of this box has always been discussed and I understand why some people consider it a bootleg, since it didn’t come from the label. I also think that at this point the signatures on the CD are discarded since no one has ever confirmed them (I guess this is what the seller is referring to, since I showed him the SPFreaks entry on the link above).
I am divided between two alternatives regarding the box I bought:
– It is fake (a âbootleg of a bootlegâ), for the reasons differences I already described (plaque, usa cd & booklet instead of uk, etc).
– It is real (part of the original 1000 boxes): to support this theory the main point is: who would go through all the trouble of bootleging a wooden box that is considered itself a bootleg by some of the most hardcore pumpkins collectors? The box I have looks otherwise exactly as the one on the SPFreaks entry.
The description from the seller sounds âinformedâ, and can actually be very useful for the history of this box if proven real, but, is it real??
-
who would go through all the trouble of bootleging a wooden box[/quote:1yqtrbup]
I think I can have that wooden box made in a quantity of 250 copies for 25 US$ each. On the ramsj market I buy 250 Siamese Dream cds for 1 dollar each and stuff them in the boxes, together with the original booklet. My investment would be 6,500.00 US$, right? Just a rough calculation, but I think I’m close to the truth here. Then, my sales could be 250 x 200 US$ = 50,000 US$. Calculate the profit yourself, and you got the reason why people are bootlegging.It happened with the Smashing Pumpkins – Earphoria promo also, in that period when people were willing to pay 300 US$ or more for it… Luckily we hardcore collectors (ahem
) know how to separate the boots from the genuine stuffs, but on record fairs and on the internet, not many are that hardcore… but just greedy, and excited to find such a "rare" item. Bootleggers know that. -
Earphoria was very popular for bootleggers, because it’s a very rare release, and because the music isn’t available anywhere else. And I think back in the day it was a lot harder to find info about the real promo, so anything that didn’t look too suspicious would have been good enough.
The question \"who would go through the effort?\" doesn’t bring us much further. That’s what everyone was wondering about those fake MCIS vinyls, because it seems a lot of work. Someone did it though.
-
-
-
-
-
My personal theory is that the same company that made the \"original\" boxes, still continues making boxes way past the 1000… This would not make the \"new\" boxes neither more or less valid (they can all be considered a bootleg anyway), but instead decreases the value of all of them… Who knows…
A couple of years ago, luciddream33 posted some pictures of what seamed to be a \"real\" box (at least a box bought in the formal market), but those pictures are not currently available. Any ideas on how to get them?
The link of that thread is: http://forums.netphoria.org/showthread.php?t=118976
-
-
technically this box is not a bootleg.
it’s what’s called a grey area release.
as it doesn’t infringe copyrights per se (like interview discs).
bootlegs do.
then again – grey area releases ARE shady…
not a lot of info to go by.
there ARE boxes like these for other artists…
i just don’t know if there might have been an over-production beyond 1.000 copies.
but when this was released it was no bootleg for sure – you could just order this from any record store. -
-
I’ve been discussing these recently with various people.
One opinion is that if the boxset has a barcode on the bottom, it’s authentic. No barcode, a copy.
I always wondered if mine’s a fakie because of the disc inside, it’s the same one as my UK-released SD album… Not a version from the US, for example.
At a -rough- guess, I’d imagine 1,000 have a barcode and the remainders don’t.
-
Can you post a picture of this barcode on the bottom of the wooden box?
This spfreaks.com entry shows a wooden box that was sold in a cardboard box. I believe this one was sold at Tower Records. The cardboard box has a barcode. It is not clear if the wooden box has one. It seems redundant though.
http://www.spfreaks.com/default.aspx?pa … &item=1697 -
-
-
So far I am confused. I have continued discussing with the seller and now I understand much more clearly what he is saying, and even if it’s not true, it kind of makes some sense… In summary, he says that not all the 1000 boxes where actually sold at that time due to their price. Even thought they were all manufactured in the USA, the main buyers were foreign retailers, mainly in Europe and Japan. Now, the manufacturer broke, so he says that he bought the remaining boxes (I am guessing around 20), planning to sell them slowly through eBay.
If this is true, and I really don’t know, since these boxes never went out of the manufacturer, they will not have a bar code or shipping box. He gave me the chance of actually returning him the box for a full refund, but I am not sure what to do… Dazey, can you please post some pictures of your box, mainly from the inside? Anyone else has one?
-
-
-
-
-
-
Thank you Dazey for the pics. A question: what is the color of the metallic plaque with the number, silver or bronze? Mine is bronze, but the plaque in the SPFreaks catalogue is silver. That is suspicious.
(I’ll be posting the name of the seller after I finish discussing with him because I want to be as sure as I can that the box he sold me is either real or fake.)
-
I believe this is the auction you are talking about:
http://cgi.ebay.com/SMASHING-PUMPKINS-S … dZViewItem
I don’t think anyone can be sure which is fake and which is real.
-
Thank you Dazey for the pics. A question: what is the color of the metallic plaque with the number, silver or bronze? Mine is bronze, but the plaque in the SPFreaks catalogue is silver. That is suspicious.
(I’ll be posting the name of the seller after I finish discussing with him because I want to be as sure as I can that the box he sold me is either real or fake.)[/quote:3blbzff7]
Bronze here, I’d guess mayonaise’s would be too.
-
the seller’s story doesn’t seem that far off—
i can clearly remember the box being quite expensive when first offered—-
plus i know from a dealer i got mine from back in i guess it was 1996/7 he had several WITHOUT the cds and just bough the cds to fill in the blanks
so – errr
i guess fakes could be real ones after all-
i mean: it’s quite a hassle to fake this release; you’d be better off faking a MACHINA II cdr set… -
the seller’s story doesn’t seem that far off—
i can clearly remember the box being quite expensive when first offered—-
plus i know from a dealer i got mine from back in i guess it was 1996/7 he had several WITHOUT the cds and just bough the cds to fill in the blanks
so – errr
i guess fakes could be real ones after all-
i mean: it’s quite a hassle to fake this release; you’d be better off faking a MACHINA II cdr set…[/quote:3pmpcqtm]or machina II itself. at least there is no wood involed!
-
-
By the way, has anyone heard of a box above No. 500? The seller says that he worked at the manufacturer company and that when they were producing the boxes they had to stop halfway bacause they were negotiating a better deal with the Pumpkins… Interesting but very difficult to prove… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a box above 400 or 500.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
That barcode assumption seems right, but the number produced… I don’t know. I recently acquired #19 in Thom’s garage sale, so I checked around a little. I found #915 on eBay, and added the pics provided on the auction to the SPfreaks database. It is still for sale, if I am right.
Funny to see now that #82 does not have the Dutch red cd, but the Virgin US cd, and the 4 page booklet instead of the 20 page booklet…
-
-
-
#19 has the \"Limited Edition\" sticker on the box, with a little barcode sticker below it with that \"4 018396 006854\" number. That same sticker is on the back of the wooden box too.
You know, I’m getting the idea that it might have gone like this: Smashing Records produced several hundreds, maybe even all of the 1,000 boxes in the end, and ships them somewhat randomly all over the world without any cd/booklet. The music store that bought this box, put their (over-)stock of Siamese Dream cds/booklets from the jewelcase version in the wooden box and tried to sell it. Maybe that’s why we find somewhat randomly both the Dutch cd/booklet and the US cd/booklet in this box?
And maybe that little barcode sticker is only on the initial batches of a several hundred of wooden boxes that were send out? Just a guess too…
-
I just found this on page 24 of that pretty cool french booklet ‘Chroniques d’Un Monument’ that was just entered in the database:
http://spfreaks.com/?page=COLLDETAILS&item=3708 (the page called Discographie)
-
And in this post I read about \"silver\" and \"bronze\" metallic plaques. So far I have only seen this type of plaques, which is to my opinion an (almost) black plaque with white/light grey letters and figures. My #19 has exactly the same plaque. But maybe someone here can show a pic of a plaque of this box that is either bronze or silver?
-
-
-
-
-
The forum ‘Collecting Items’ is closed to new topics and replies.
