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How to Tell if a Record Is a First Pressing

How to tell if a record is a first pressing: check the label, catalog number, runout matrix codes, sleeve and barcode, with real examples from classic LPs.

Checked October 31, 2026

How can you tell if a record is a first pressing?

Compare your copy, clue by clue, with the known details of the first issue: the label design and its small print, the catalog number, the matrix codes in the runout, and the sleeve. A first pressing matches on all of them, and no single clue, not even a matrix number ending in 1, proves it on its own.

This matters because the first pressing is usually the copy collectors pay for. Two records with the same catalog number can be years apart, and the difference is often a publisher credit, a line of text around the label or a single digit in the dead wax.

What counts as a first pressing

Collectors use first pressing for the copies made for a record's original release, the first ones issued to the public. Later runs, recuts and reissues of the same album come after it, even when they share its catalog number.

There is not always one single first pressing. In the 1970s the major US labels sent two sets of lacquers to each of their plants: a Columbia cutting engineer has described a first order going out as sets 1A to 1F, split between the Pitman, Terre Haute and Santa Maria plants, and all of them were first cuttings. Copies from each plant are equally genuine firsts and can differ in small details. The album pages here list every pressing with its labels, catalog numbers and runout codes for exactly this reason.

Start with the label

The center label is the fastest filter, because label designs changed and a first pressing carries the design in use when the record came out. The Beatles' Please Please Me is the classic case. Early Parlophone pressings (mono PMC 1202, stereo PCS 3042) have gold lettering on a black label, and the very first pressing credits the Lennon and McCartney songs to Dick James Mus. Co., apart from Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You, credited to Ardmore and Beechwood. A second pressing kept the gold on black but switched the credit to Northern Songs Ltd., and from the third pressing Parlophone used its yellow on black label.

Read the rim text too, the small print that runs around the edge of the label. The UK first pressing of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (Harvest SHVL 804) has a black label with a solid light blue triangle and Gramophone Co Ltd printed around the perimeter.

Addresses on labels date records as well. Blue Note introduced a label reading 47 W. 63rd New York 23 with catalog number 1544 and used it on most titles through 1577, and from 4018 it added INC and a registered trademark sign. John Coltrane's Blue Train is BLP 1577, at the end of that range, and its early copies carry the New York 23 label.

Check the catalog number and the price code

The catalog number is printed larger than the matrix number on the label and is normally the same on both sides of the disc. It tells you which release you have but rarely which pressing, because labels kept the same number through several pressings: every early Please Please Me in mono is PMC 1202. Two things make it useful anyway.

Columbia built the list price into the prefix, which separates its originals from later reprints. It used KC for standard albums from 1971 at $5.98, PC from 1973 at $6.98, JC from late 1976 at $7.98 and FC from 1978 at $8.98. The PC prefix was later revived as a budget series: those reprints have a barcode on the back cover, while the 1970s originals do not.

Promotional copies usually keep the stock catalog number, with a white or differently marked label, but some promo series had their own prefixes, such as Columbia AS, Warner Bros. PRO and Capitol SPRO. A different prefix is a sign you are holding something other than the regular first issue.

Read the matrix codes in the runout

The runout, or dead wax, is the smooth band between the last groove and the label. It carries the matrix number for that side, stamped or handwritten, usually with a cut number at the end. A low cut number such as 1 is often quoted as proof of a first pressing, but it is not: a first cut could be rejected, and cut 2 or later may be the one on the first copies sold.

The Dark Side of the Moon shows this. Its UK first issue matrices are machine stamped and end A2 and B2, so side one reads SHVL 804 A-2 and side two SHVL 804 B-2, followed by small extra letters and numbers. At EMI, if the first lacquer was ruined, the next cut became the real first. Please Please Me, by contrast, reads XEX 421-1N and XEX 422-1N on early mono copies.

At Columbia, the letter after the cut number identifies one of several lacquers cut together: 1A to 1F were all first cuttings, and a 2 meant the program had changed, for example a revised mix or a different take. Engineer marks help too: the original US cut of Led Zeppelin II (Atlantic SD 8236) carries Robert Ludwig's tiny handwritten RL in the runout. Atlantic recalled that hot cut and had it recut at Atlantic Studios, so copies with RL are the early ones.

Look at the sleeve and inserts

Sleeves were printed in batches too, and printers, credits and small design details changed. The Dark Side of the Moon first issue came in an early matte gatefold that opens on one side, with blue credit text on the inside left panel naming the printer Garrod and Lofthouse Ltd., and a die-cut black poly-lined inner sleeve with Made in Great Britain in silver. It came with two posters and two stickers, but so did later issues, so the inserts prove the copy is complete, not that it is a first.

Some first sleeves are known by a color. The first UK pressing of Led Zeppelin's debut album printed the band name and the Atlantic logo in turquoise; when the print switched to orange later that year, the turquoise sleeve became a collector's item.

Not every number on a sleeve is a pressing clue. The small number in the lower right corner on the back of many vintage Columbia jackets identifies the jacket manufacturer and has nothing to do with the record inside, so a 4 there does not mean fourth pressing.

Barcodes and other signs of a later issue

A barcode is the quickest giveaway. The first UPC barcode was scanned in a grocery store on June 26, 1974, so an album first released in the 1960s or early 1970s that has a barcode on its back cover is a later issue. Columbia's 1970s JC albums, for example, have no barcode, while the later PC budget reprints do.

On Blue Note, look for the ear. Original pre-Liberty pressings were made at the Plastylite plant and have a small mark in the dead wax known as the ear, a P for Plastylite. Liberty used up old stock of labels and jacket slicks after it bought the label, so a Blue Note with an early catalog number but no ear is a Liberty pressing, whatever the label or jacket says. The deep groove, a ring pressed into the label by the dies, appears on first pressings of every Blue Note LP through 4058, but it is not proof by itself either: collectors warn that you cannot date a pressing by the label alone or by the deep groove.

What to write down from your copy

Work from the label outward and note each of these before you compare anything. Small details count, so copy them exactly as printed or scratched.

Label
Color and design, logo, rim text, publisher credits and any address.
Catalog number
The number and prefix on the label and on the cover, and whether the two match.
Runout
Both sides, every character exactly as it appears, including small letters, numbers and initials away from the main matrix.
Sleeve
Printer credit, gatefold style, inner sleeve, inserts and whether there is a barcode on the back.

Check your copy

Compare everything you wrote down with the pressings listed on the album's page, or search the catalog number or runout code. If one clue does not fit, such as a correct first label with a later matrix, you probably have a later pressing, or a disc and sleeve that started out in different copies.

The VinylLens app does the first step from a photo of the center label: it identifies the record, tells you which pressing it is and shows its value for every grade.

Sources

VinylLens app

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