spintheblackestcircles.org

So, I have just realized that my first US press copy of The Thing bears a stamp in golden lettering on the back that says "Export Only..."
I wonder if this is something special. Are/were marked export copies a usual thing and do people add this feature as a variant to Discogs?

Found two listings on Popsike for export copies and it doesn't affect the price I guess. Must have been applied by the record company as there was no german pressing, maybe for tax purposes. Nevertheless, interesting find.

I get a bit obsessive over things like the gold promo stamps. It actually took me a really long time to find a copy of Conan the Destroyer that *didn't* have the promo stamp. Pretty much every copy I have seen in the US is stamped, but I found a copy in Japan that was unstamped.

^strange! You'd think that promo copies were more of a rarity. I've seen beatles, rolling stones and the likes being described as export but i can't remember ever having seen records physically stamped with this.

Slightly relevant -My dad used to run a small radio station in Australia as a uni project, and ordered a lot of import records. Each record was hole punched on the sleeve to prove it was taxed correctly, because it was mail order only they took 6 weeks to arrive from the US. The market literally didn’t exist in the 70s