JohnnyByeBye wrote: November 22nd, 2025, 10:58 am
It's kinda sad that the best albums like In Person, NBC-special, first album and Elvis is Back always seemed most uncommon to find in records shops back in the eighties.
But maybe the reason was that they were still full price in RCA catalog,so the shopkeepers preferred to have a stock of Camdens with less risk.
RCA UK flooded the market with the green label, mid priced, International re-issues during the early '80's, and as many of these titles had been out of print since circa 1970, this appears to have created a reasonable amount of demand. Even though many of these albums were not representative of Elvis' best work.
Of course classic albums such as Elvis Is Back (which was eventually given a green label reissue) and From Elvis In Memphi remained part of the catalogue since they were first released, so I guess it was inevitable that, with the exception of new fans, most people already had these albums in their collections.
That said, when the pressing operation moved to Germany there appears to have been a conscious effort to make the entire catalogue available at mid price. Subsequently, it wasn't a bad time to be a new fan, as pristine, newly pressed records were widely available at affordable prices, whilst I'm sure that more seasoned collectors also welcomed the opportunity to replace worn out copies of their favourite albums...